How the Flowers Wilt
by skele-smol
Summary: "Through her lashes she catches a new plume of fire exploding into the night sky. Ribbons of hot flame and dancing embers twining high and skirting between brawling teens and trained mercenaries." Violet is taken by Delta and held captive, but what exactly could have happened to make her turn on Clementine when she comes to rescue Violet and her friends? A 4-part Violentine story
1. Rip the flower by its roots

**How the Flowers Wilt.**

**Chapter.1: Rip the flower by its roots.**

Darkness is a strange substance, a difficult phenomenon to explain with words. In one moment it is a gentle embrace that kisses upon the skin of those who seek its comfort to slumber in its peacefulness. Or a flirtatious mistress for all of those who choose to walk with her at their side, the alluring promise of excitement and adventure painted upon gossamer lips. It is charming and seductive, jovial and mischievous, a welcomed companion as it whispers secrets and flattery into eager ears.

Right up until the moment that realization draws in around the foolhardy, shattering their fanciful thoughts and replacing them with the knowledge that the midnight trickster has swallowed up all the exits and robbed her of her best senses. Replacing the whimsical wonders with paralyzing fear and tongues of dread that licked ice along her flesh. Now there is no longer a reason for the darkness to hide from her and it warps from the guise of a friend and into a predator. It surrounds her with liquid walls that roll and crash around her. Toying with her thoughts and muddling her memories, tossing glimpses of the waking world but always, always keeping her carefully tethered just beneath the surface of true consciousness.

Through her lashes she catches a new plume of fire exploding into the night sky. Ribbons of hot flame and dancing embers twining high and skirting between brawling teens and trained mercenaries. The wordless booms of unfamiliar voices twisting through acrid smoke, choking out the watery echo of more voices, these she vaguely recognizes, as they desperately call out her name just as the darkness turns to a viscous liquid and crashes down upon her head. Once again it draws her into strong arms and drags her down, forcing her further away from the waking world.

When she next feels herself skirting the lines of awareness her body is sending strange and disconcerting signals to her brain. She was cold but sweating, she can feel the sticky tickle as liquid rolls the back of her skull and matts her pale hair. The balance in her inner ear is gone and she can feel the squeeze of nausea in her throat. Disconnected, her guts give an unsettling sensation as though they are floating around the confines of her squished stomach even as she dangles, a broken puppet, slung across broad shoulders. Her bound wrists bounce against the wide span of back, fade in and out of the darkness that toys with her clarity. It's like being trapped inside some terrible nightmare. Being aware but not really, of seeing and feeling but not being able to match the correct sensation to the receptors in her jumbled mind as her vision swims further away from her into blurred gray-scale and her eyes close to the swing of grasping fingers that slice through the contrasting shadows once more. The terrifying sounds of heavy limbs being dragged across the forest floor and the sickening crack of wood on bone and the thump of broken bodies fading from her ears.

She fights harder to break the darkness's hold over her this third time. As soon as she feels the living world humming around her she mentally kicks herself into awareness. Her eyes snap open, pupils constricting against the sudden sting from the flood of flickering torch light. Her hearing comes to her sharper this time, not by much, but she can pick out the soft roll of waves on steel and clumping of heavy boots on wood. She was sure that this level of alertness alone would have been enough to bring her heart beat down to just below the speed of a rabbit in a snare, but it doesn't. It still flutters painfully, thrumming against the strange pressure upon her chest. With a herculean effort she is able to lift her head right side up, the upside down view just feeds into the steady throb of pain in the back of her head and behind her eyes, and she squints into the darkness.

Her eyes fall upon Omar's familiar face first, his own eyes are blown wide in agony and the whites around his midnight irises are clear with terror. His arm is slung around the waist of a strange dark-skinned woman, one of those who attacked them. Her fist is twisted into the back of his windbreaker as she begrudgingly helps him to walk somewhat steadily, each limping step sending only a faint trickle of crimson down his shin rather than jettisoning fresh spurts from the gunshot wound. He stares back at her, uncertain if she is truly awake behind the fogged green, he had seen her rouse and fall several times since their trek away from the ruined school, biding his time to try to talk with her.

She can see his lips tremble as they move in silent question. _"Vi, you ok?" _

Violet nods once, slowly and immediately she realizes the movement to be a mistake. Despite her caution, despite the gentleness of the motion, she feels the darkness roll up around her hot on the heels of the fresh wave of vertigo. Gloating cruelly as coaxing fingers slid her eyelids down and draws her thoughts away, back into swirling nonsense of her concussed mind once more.

When Violet awakens this time there is no gentleness. No gradual rousing. It is sudden and brutal. Consciousness slams into her like a fist to the gut, punching her up and through the glass case the darkness had imprisoned her in and sent her screaming back into reality. Every weak finger of light scorches through her nerve endings, every murky thought spins her around and demands full attention. And there is a vague, lurching sensation that either she or the room itself is moving very slowly, and that gives a final push to her overwhelmed senses.

The roiling waves of nausea, finally too much for her to hold back, swirl up over the weakened blonde and she leans away just in time to vomit thin strings of bile and acid onto the barren floor. Her head throbs and pulses with the roar of her blood, lancing blades of fire slice from behind her eyes as her shoulders rattle through the coughing and dry heaving. Distress and pain grasps at her empty belly and squeezes, forcing her to purge until she swears she can taste a sweet metallic tang through the burning at the back of her tongue and her arm that held her up over the edge of the cot collapses out from beneath her.

She feels like she's made of glass. Delicate. Shivering violently and with her belly aching miserably, as though bruised from the inside, Violet shifts and curls around herself. Her breathing is careful and slow. Long and steady inhales through the acid that burns her nose, holding for three beats and then the gradual, controlled exhales through her teeth. Expelling the both the taste of stomach bile and the bubbling terror in the back of her thoughts that is desperate to make itself known.

Instincts told her that the battle's conclusion was not in their favor. How could it be? Last she recalled their iron gates had been ripped open. Fire and gunshots had turned the courtyard where they had laughed and bonded and shared their meals into a battleground of bloodshed and death. The sounds of their war had drawn dozens of walkers from the foreboding recesses of the forest, hungry and swarming, and flooded them into the grounds. The homemade bomb that was meant to defend them from capture ringing through the air like a fucking dinner-bell. So it made sense that if she was alive, and not a lump of chewed meat slowly pushing her way through the stinking intestines of a dead head, then she was a prisoner of the Delta.

Panic flares in her chest and she punches the heels of her palms into her eyes. Just how badly had her people suffered? Were any of them still alive? She knew at least one was dead. Lilly had seen to that as she plunged her knife through his soft throat. Sticking him like a pig in front of every single one of the Ericson kids eyes. His outraged battle roar fading into the panicked gurgles of someone who knew they were dying, drowning in their own blood, the sight and sound taking the fight out of some of their youngest with him.

Violet sniffled quietly. No tears came, she was too wrung out, too dehydrated for them. But the numbness of his loss did. She still felt the grief carefully force itself behind her ribs and carve its scar into the spiderweb of fissures that already scored her heart. Another one of the forgotten and abandoned had fallen, and the number of those who would remember them dwindled further.

Mitch was gone. Dead. Sure, he could be an asshole at times and it was true that she had butted heads with him, probably more often than she would have liked, but she had respected him. He had a sense of surety in himself that allowed him to be unashamedly honest. No punches pulled. A soul of fire burning behind a tempered glass exterior. An inferno. Dangerous and destructive when he needed to be, and radiating warmth and security when others needed him. And perhaps that was the worst flaw to possess in this walker world -the physical competence without the experience to know when to show restraint.

She wondered if Lilly had at least allowed the spark of life to extinguish from his eyes before she ripped her blade free on a flood of arterial blood and slammed it through his skull. She wondered if the woman had even cared that she had slaughtered a teenage boy -not a grown man, but _a child- _on instinct. She wondered what had the woman seen when she pulled back the curtain of teenage arrogance and stripped them of their misplaced confidence that a few laughable strategies had instilled in them with that single bullet to Omar's shin? Had she found them as the wide-eyed and terrified children that they were? Abandoned and desperate and scrambling to survive the organized tactical strike force that she lead, or had she caved to the siren call of war and seen the teens on equal standing to her own? After all it was the nature of the beast, a basic strategy instilled into the military of the old world; to dehumanize the enemy, destabilize and antagonize in battle, it just made it easier to justify the unavoidable barbarism that accompanies the fight for survival.

"You're awake then?"

The low, feminine voice carves into Violet's mind, stalling out her thoughts and sends her fight or flight instincts racing against each other. A confusing whirlwind of commands and sensations all pulling at her with equal force.

What had started as a contortion of her stomach, the twist and clench of her guts, swiftly became a feeling of being smothered. Icy tendrils, invisible hands, coiling and squeezing her lungs until her breathing became erratic, deep and shallow all at once. She fights it. She fights herself. She fights the feeling of her body as it writhes to run or be free or to shut itself down entirely. But she also flees. Her elbows digging into the scratchy canvas beneath her as she hauls herself from her pitiful huddle and up onto her feet far too fast for her senses to keep up with.

She forces herself to back away on swaying feet. Her survivalist instincts screaming for her to at least keep distance between herself and the threat, even as the figure swam in and out of her fuzzing focus. She barely manages a step or two before vertigo and exhaustion takes her to her knees. Sweat beading upon her brow and her pale skin paling further still as she sinks and folds until her forehead is pressed to the floor between her knees and the rancid stench of her own vomit fills her nose.

"On your feet, recruit!" Lilly's order is cold, emotionless. She has no time nor patience for sympathy. An arctic wind howling through the barren room, ripping into the pitiful huddled form of the teen on her knees and chilling Violet's insides further. She hears something small and metallic hit and skitter across the floor. Steel singing on steel, ringing through her skull and setting her teeth on edge.

"I said, on your feet!"

Her forehead, still pressed to the cold floor, throbs as she tilts it slightly and drags her line of vision toward the spot where the sound had halted. From the darkness beneath the cot, liquid silver winks back at her. Small and wickedly sharp the shiv is little more than a decorative letter opener than an actual weapon, not designed to kill outright but its edge still promises the ability to cut through flesh with ease. And, for a brief moment, she contemplates wrapping her fingers around it and hurling it right back at her captor.

The lurching chill that had long since settled in Violet's guts twists sharply at the idea. Distorting her uncertainty into something new, something strong and burning. Icy flames lacing her veins and creeping along her spine, seeping into her brain and intoxicating her thoughts with an emotion that she had no intention of feeling. She was scared, terrified actually, but beneath her fear was the overwhelming urge to stand and fight back. But Violet doesn't move. Doesn't reach for the weapon. She doesn't trust Lilly and simply can't understand why the woman has come to her alone and offered her the opportunity to fight back. So Violet simply lays there staring blankly at the blade and listens to the sound of Lilly's heavy combat boots as they scuff and bump across the cell floor, bringing her closer and closer.

"Damnit girl, stop your cowering! I thought you were stronger than this." Violet winces as Lilly's voice thunders down on her. Echoing through her skull, the bladed words ricocheting behind her eyes and around her mind like bullets. The footsteps pause beside her but the words continued their assault. Continued to challenge and taunt her. Daring her to fight back. Making Violet's heart flutter like a skittish bird caged behind her ribs, her skin crawl and itch as though insects swarmed beneath her flesh and through her blood. "So stop whimpering like a brat that pissed her bed. Pick up that knife and get up on your feet!"

The silence that follows is suffocating, poisonous, and it slowly paralyzes her. It lingers in the air, a smothering blanket of contempt that oozes across her skin as Lilly's eyes slide away from her and land upon the blade. Violet closes her eyes and focuses on simply breathing steadily, in and out, and ignoring as best she could the click of Lilly's tongue. The condescending sound cutting deeply into her already wounded pride.

"Such a disappointment."

Through barely parted eyelids, Violet watches in silence the way Lilly moves. Fluid and languid, efficient and precise. The same way that Clementine moves, both of them built for battle, shaped by experience she could never even fathom. Even if she were at her best Violet knows the woman would take her down with ease, and concussed as she was Lilly would've found more of a challenge in subduing an angry six week old kitten than the wounded blonde. She hears the rustle and swish of different fabrics rubbing over each other as Lilly bends down and collects the small knife. She can feel the air stir against her sweat dampened skin and the gentle vibrations through the floor as the intimidating woman turns and strides away.

"I need someone in here to clean up, now. This one's a fucking mess."

The bubble of time around Violet slows again as one set of feet left the cell and a new set entered. There's a murmur of lowered voices exchanging lower words that she can't make out, so instead Violet simply curls into a tiny ball, wrapping herself up in a cocoon of her misery as she squeezes her lids together and tries to shuffle her thoughts into a coherent and sensical series of events.

She can hear the new figure move closer, the footsteps lighter and more spry than Lilly's had been. Hears the musical swish and the light splashing of water moving within a container and dripping from rags. The gentle splat and rasp of damp fabric swiping against the floor as the faceless raider sets about wiping up the puddle of bile between Violet's miserable huddle and the cot pushed against the cell wall. For a moment, everything else is silent but there is a brittleness to the air. Some invisible band pulled so tight that it's only a matter of time before it snaps, and if it doesn't, Violet feels like she might.

She clutches her arms around herself tighter and curls deeper, every ambient sound tightens the tension until, finally the silence beats her to its precipice and breaks.

"I remember the last time I got stuck cleaning up your puke." Peering carefully from the twists of limbs, Violet felt her heart slam up into the back of her throat and her thoughts stall amid the static of misfiring synapses. "You were what, Thirteen? Or maybe fourteen… I dunno, I just remember you had gotten your first period. Shit, you were in so much pain you puked everywhere."

Her hair had always reminded Violet of the burnt orange sunset, the two shades melting together in that strange and exotic middle ground between ginger and red. There was a swirl of blue to the green in her eyes, or perhaps it was the green that threaded through the blue, not that it mattered much when they glittered like pools at her from their frame of pale skin and fire.

The impact of seeing her again after so long steals every last wisp of air from Violet's lungs, her lips parting and moving wordlessly as she lay there struggling to inhale, to exhale. To do anything more demanding than simply trying to remember _how _to breathe and search amid the roar of white noise for the name that bounces around inside her skull.

"Minnie?"

Minnie, her back to the blonde as she finishes wiping the last of the mess splattered on the floor, tenses and her movements still at both the bewilderment in Violet's voice and the affectionate nickname that hangs stagnant in the air between them. She tilts her head barely over her shoulder, eyes sliding to meet the grey-green that gleams fever bright as they observe her right back. "I prefer Minerva."

There was a look in Minerva's eyes that Violet couldn't recall ever seeing in them before. Something guarded, almost haunted, it made her chest tighten and her heart plummet."You always said Minerva made you feel old."

Minerva scowls at the soiled cloth as she tosses it into the dirty water, ignoring the droplets that escaped over the rim of the shallow bowl as she shoved herself to her feet. She moves with ease, picking her way carefully toward the cot and sits, perched on the edge with her long legs outstretched, her knees parted. At her hip is a box that she flips open and rummages in, pulling out a small bottle of peroxide and bandages. "I know, but people change _Vi-vi _." There's a silent suggestion for movement in the way that Minerva nods to the space between her knees, and something that feels a little strained in the way that one side of her mouth lifts. The small crooked smile lights up her features in all the wrong ways. But before Violet can give any real thought to it, the expression slips from Minerva's face and she fixes an expectant look upon the younger teen that leaves her little room for argument. "Now drag your ass over here and let me take a look at your head. Heard Sullene did a number on you."

"Sullene?" Violet eases herself up slowly, settling into a sitting position before she twists herself around until the older girl is presented with her back. Then, with her hands acting as leverage, she shifts just enough for her ass to kiss the floor as she shuffles her way back between Minerva's knees.

"Crazy bitch with a gun." Minerva smiles, more a pressing together of her lips than an actual smile, and curls her fingers around Violet's shoulder, carefully steering her the last few inches and halting her just before the edge of the cot can bite against her spine.

"Narrow it down for me." Violet hisses sharply through her teeth as Minerva carefully threads her fingers through the matted strands, teasing apart snarls and knots and combing out the flakes of dried blood. Her fingers are firm but gentle as they work, and Violet finds herself unconsciously melting into the sensation. Everything felt familiar, the touch, the easy flow of crude banter between them. It was comforting and something that she so desperately needed to help her ground herself with right now so she can attempt to process everything. "Everyone here's a 'crazy bitch with a gun.'"

Minerva hums in agreement and chuckles softly. A rich, throaty sound that reaches deep inside Violet's chest and squeezes around her lungs, crushing her breath over her lips. She has missed that sound, so much, it almost physically hurt to hear it again.

"Minnie?"

"Minerva." The redhead corrects Violet for a second time. Perhaps a little too sharply as the shorter girl seems to recoil at the heat in the biting words and shrinks down into herself. There's another snap of plastic and the rasp of scissors cutting through wire as well as the air. Curious, Violet twists her torso around just enough to glimpse Minerva threading surgical wire through a needle before she feels gentle hands coaxing her head back around to stare ahead once more. "Hold still, this needs a couple of stitches, and you had a question."

Violet winces against the sting of a needle, the pinching fingers and the tug of wire pulling together her tender and bruised flesh. "Would it be ok if I… if I still called you Minnie?"

Minerva pauses her slow movements, tying off the suturing thread and snipping, granting herself a few moments of reprieve to ponder before she sighs. "Sure, I guess."

And that conformation was all it took for Violet's walls to crumble around her, with a gasp she latches on to the familiar nickname and her words come spilling out. "Minnie, I'm really fucking scared." Emotion takes Violet by the throat, crushing her windpipe until all the words she utters leave her lips broken, carried upon a rattle of painful breath. "What's going to happen to us?"

In all the years that Minnie has known Violet; first as a quiet and shy child and then a brooding and hot tempered teen, as a friend and then more intimately as a girlfriend, she has never heard her voice sound so defeated and hopeless. She knows instinctively that Violet is reaching out to her, to the Minnie who used to squeeze her hand and smile brightly at her. She knows that Violet is asking for her help, pleading for her to soothe her fears and tell her everything will be alright. She knows that Violet is pleading with the Minnie she used to be, to take her hand and not leave her here to drown alone, without knowing that that Minnie is long gone. Violet is calling to a ghost that she doesn't even know _is _a ghost.

Minnie is careful to keep her eyes cast low to avoid acknowledging the expectant look that she knew she would see there clouding pale green as she pushes herself to her feet. She forces herself to ignore the vulnerability in Violet's stuttering breathing as betrayed eyes track her movements, watching the way that she tucks the medical kit into her pocket and consciously steps around her.

"I gotta get going, Vi." Minnie tries to block out the gasping breath that sounded suspiciously like a broken sob and makes her heart drop through the floor. She tries to block out the twists of guilt, sharper than any blade, that burns between her ribs. "Lilly'll send Dorian looking for me if I don't check the medical kit back in."

She only pauses when her palm is resting on the cell door, taking a moment to inhale a slow, steadying breath that steels her thoughts and schools her features into a mask of careful neutrality. "It'll be better for us both if she doesn't find me here still."

"Minnie… Please, I..."

The voice is quiet and muffled and the Delta soldier carefully slides her eyes as far to the side as she can without actually turning. If she keeps her distance she knows she can just walk out of the cell. Can just forget the achingly familiarity to the banter and gentle words that she had shared with her people's prisoner. She knows that if she can just go back out there, she can detach herself from the situation and just be the Minerva that she had been for the past year and she won't have to see the phantoms of herself and her sister from a year ago, trapped where Violet is now.

But she does see. It's just barely there in her peripheral, in the way that Violet has drawn her legs to her chest. It's in the way that her long fingers claw so tightly into her jeans and in the way that she can see the ivory of bone bleaching through the skin of her knuckles. And it's in the way that she presses her eyes into the backs of her knees as silvery blonde curtain falls around her, effectively shutting out the world that doesn't seem to want her in it.

She looked so lonely, so abandoned, and Minnie flinches at the strange tug in her chest that compels her to whirl around and stride back to Violet, still folded on the floor where she had left her. It compels her to drop heavily to her knees and reach out, taking the tiny little blonde thing into her arms.

"It's really good to see you again, Vi." She whispers. There's a flutter of disappointment that stirs in her belly when Violet stiffens in her arms, but only for a moment. Violet's rigid posture quickly relaxes under the impulsive brush of Minnie's lips against her temple. Breath stirring the ash blonde strands with tender words spoken directly into her ear. "You have no idea how much I've missed you."

Violet feels her stomach lurch as guilt slides down her insides to pool around her guts. Low and heavy, a fat serpent that coils around her organs and slowly squeezes.

She should say something. She knows she should. It isn't fair on any of them, but she just can't figure out what to say exactly. And then there was this really strange flutter of doubt that tainted her still muddled thoughts. A dark voice in the back of her mind that whispered and soured the fond memories of Clementine. It twisted the warm smiles she had gifted Violet into something cruel. It stripped away the charming fluster in her stuttering after they shared a kiss and left only the tremble of humiliation and regret. It showed to her a scene that didn't quite feel real enough for her to immediately believe but also didn't quite feel entirely false enough to be dismissed either. It told to her a tale of honeyed eyes that blazed gold in the firelight, meeting terrified green from behind a drawn bow and enemy body. It spoke of those same eyes that read the desperate plea for help, only to slide away and take another into their sights. Loosing her bolt for him over her.

So instead, Violet allows herself to be just a little bit selfish. Allows herself to cling to her memories of Minnie just a little bit longer as she inclined her head barely a fraction into the feather-light kiss before her former love -who she had believed dead- slipped from her arms, from her cell and disappeared, leaving her alone once more.

* * *

Minerva moved in comfortable silence, twisting and turning past piles of stacked up supply crates and stepping around her fellow Delta soldiers as they patrolled the decks. Her feet taking her further away from the hold where she had left Violet scared and confused while she fought to sort through her own thoughts. Trying and failing to dissect the strange emotion that had suddenly bubbled to the surface upon seeing her former girlfriend again after a forced year apart.

She was careful to hold her features nonchalantly and her posture confident, despite the conflict warring behind her eyes. A masterful display of her self control, though she was furious that this ability had fled the moment she had interacted with the younger girl. She was not kin, Minerva was Delta now, and Delta demanded her obedience and loyalty in its entirety. If anyone so much as questioned her motives or suspected her of betrayal punishment would come swift and cruel, and Minerva was intimately aware of just how much so.

Minerva found herself arriving at the top most deck, the hurricane deck if she recalled Gad's teachings, swiftly and paused in front of the tiny cubby next to the pilot house. She replaced the medical box upon its shelf inside and withdrew the log book and pencil, carefully noting down the supplies she had used while tending to Violet's head wound and marked which items would require restocking upon their return to the Delta. As she replaced the pencil and book to their rightful position atop the medical box, she felt the fine hairs at the nape of her neck stir and rise moments before she heard her name being drawled out by a low, dark voice that was too soft and too carefully soothing that it sent a chill slithering along her spine.

"Minerva."

Obedience had her pivoting around and bringing her heels together, but primal instinct had her spine snapping upright and her shoulders held stiff, she raised her chin, tilting slightly higher adding a few extra inches to her height. It was a posture she assumed as much out of her training as well as an attempt at making herself look less of a vulnerable target.

"Ma'am?"

"You were down there quite a while. I trust you have some good news for me." Lilly swept her gaze over the tension in her subordinate's posture. The smirk that had been playing on her lips spreading wider as she observed the redhead's expression with predatory interest. To Lilly, fear was her prey and she fell upon it like a hyena scenting carrion. "I do hope you saw more potential in our little catch than I did."

Minerva's whole body tensed at the threat thinly veiled amongst the words that could easily be seen as a passing comment. Panic always tightened its grip upon chest whenever she faced her commander, though she was careful to never let it touch her eyes. "Yes ma'am, I believe so."

Lilly folded her arms loosely over her chest and adjusted her stance into one that carried the air of casualness. A stance carefully designed to disguise the way her lean muscles had coiled, ready to launch her into motion at a moments notice. "Well, I'm all ears. Do tell me just how you think our new soldiers will fit into our operations."

Minerva cast her gaze to her feet, considering the statement warily before raising her eyes again, hesitantly meeting the deep mahogany depths of her superior, uncertain of what she expected to read in their shadows "The boys aren't suited to fill ranks in the Delta fighting force, ma'am." She froze, her blood chilling and her attention caught as a dark emotion flittered over Lilly's face, tightening her lips in a scornful twist. "But they would be more suited civilian duties. They are adaptable and resourceful, book smarts and cook smarts, they would be invaluable to maintain the compound and keep our soldiers fed."

"I see." Lilly quirked an eyebrow, somewhat amused by the young soldier's statement. "Disappointing, but not a total wash. We can move a couple of the more 'suitable' candidates over from domestic duties and have those two replace them."

Minerva drew a deep and silent breath before hardened and narrowed eyes sharpened, and she noted a gradual pull in Lilly's lips that quelled any feeling of relief the redhead had gained. In moment's Lilly's expression had morphed from vague disappointment and into the sly and unnerving grin of a wolf cornering a lamb.

"And your little girlfriend? She looks every part a soldier but there's a defiance in her, much like there was in your sister." Her smirk carves wider as her pitch drops dangerously low. "And I would so hate for _us _to waste our time on another 'Sophie' situation, wouldn't you, Minerva?"

Lilly's rusted brown orbs flicked toward Minerva, carefully scrutinizing every shift of muscle that twitched at the corner of her eyelid or tightened in her jaw. Cruel delight flares in her chest at the shadow of pain that briefly touched the younger woman's eyes and contracted her pupils minutely. Greedily, she searched for more obvious telltale signs that Minerva may have picked up on the unspoken warning that laced her words. She hadn't, or if she had, she simply ignored it.

Minerva's eyes betrayed nothing more to her and her next words were cold, clipped and devoid of emotion. "Yes ma'am. But you don't have to worry. Violet possesses loyalty designed for life at the Delta. She _will _be the soldier you want. You can leave her to me."

"Very well." Lilly moved to step around her young soldier, her path bringing her far too close in a bold invasion of her personal space. Minerva held herself, as well as her nerves, as steady as she could until Lilly's form slid from her peripherals. Just as she allowed herself a barely audible sigh, she felt Lilly's firm hand come down upon her shoulder. Fingers curling dangerously tight as she fairly sang her parting words. "Oh, and _Minnie _."

Minerva felt her heart stall at the chilling way Lilly drew out her nickname.

"It would do the both of you well to not disappoint me."


	2. Split their stems and watch them bleed

**Author's Note:** Well, hi there. I am still around and very much still submerged into this fandom. Sorry for the lack of updates this month, I promise I have been working on new chapters for Ash and Bone, as well as a new installment to my polyamory AU, all on top of this extra long chapter and clocking in a total of over 30,000 words for the month. And 25,000 words of those have been dealing super high emotions as well as some darker situations. Anyway, that being said, I do hope you enjoy this new chapter. I am super proud of it. I will add, this chapter deals with some dark stuff, so trigger warning for mental manipulation, mind fuckery as well as trauma. Feed back would be very much appreciated.

Chapter. 2: Split their stems and watch them bleed. 

_"Why would I go anywhere else, if you're here?" _

_The honeyed eyes on hers are filled with starlight, and a kindness so innocent and genuine she could lose herself in them for an eternity. Filled with an emotion so fathomless that she feels she could drown. As vast as the velvet skies above them. Endless. It set her belly alight and made her heart stutter. Her pale hand lapsed to grip hers, their fingers lacing, holding for a second and squeezing shyly. _

_"I think... I mean, I hope... we're more than just friends. And, I want...To be together... as girlfriends." _

_The lips that touched hers were dry and chapped, soft and shy. The kiss shared as delicate as the brush of a butterfly wing. She sighed softly through her nose as the moment of sweet intimacy ended, pale lashes fluttering open and smokey green widening in confusion. The golden gaze of star fire had faded, replaced instead with moons of aquamarine and freckled constellations. _

_"You've no idea how much I've missed you, Vi…" _

A sharp gasp of breath skims over Violet's lips and her eyes snap open, glazed with confusion and exhaustion. Her body hurls Violet to her feet, chest heaving, lungs battling the suffocating sensation of her heart throbbing against the cage of her ribs. With conflicting voices, Clementine's genuine warmth and Minnie's stiff affection, still ringing in her ears Violet's pupils dilate in her panic and the weak light that spills through the bars of her cell as she tries and fails to focus on anything in front of her.

Anything else but the images that her treacherous and muddled mind insists on showing her.

Anything but Clementine smiling lovingly at her. Wide, expectant eyes that fell to her lips, watched in delight the flicker of pink of Violet's tongue touching the barely parted seam to her mouth as she collected the lingering taste of their kiss. Anything but the softening of the strange expression that had shadowed Minnie's features as she had tended to the wounded blonde. Anything but the soft words Clementine breathed to her with a fondness that was so achingly familiar in a voice so strangely new. Anything but that brief moment Minnie, her Minnie, had shone through the raider facade and the delicate brush of lips barely skimming her temple in a kiss that Violet distinctly recalls leaning into.

Anything.

Anything but guilt has taken a strangle hold upon her throat. A palpable pressure that crushes down and makes every breath that she pulls into her lungs a struggle. Anything but the self loathing that twists its gnarled fingers into her mind, drawing forth even more images to storm her thoughts. Images that twist and bleed into each other in a confusing kaleidoscope of stars and stinging smoke. Of warming smiles and screams of battle. One twist, a shift in perspective, and the memories staining each other churn into a chaotic, intimate dance of truths and fictions. Fraying threads that tangle into a noose-man's knot of blame and doubt, tightening around her neck.

Her fingers crawl into her hair, tangle around the dirty blonde locks and pull. Grounding herself just barely enough with the sting and burn of her torn up scalp for her lids to fight back the tears scorching in the corners of her eyes and the anguished scream tearing at her throat.

Anything… _please! _

The sudden, chilling clash of steel on steel rents the air around her ears. Swallowing the thunderous roar of her internalized torture with bullets of agony that ricochet painfully inside her skull and tongues of misery that lance behind her cracked eyelids. From between the bars protrudes a dulled, cruel muzzle of a gun heavily stained with a muddied red that could easily been either aged blood or rust.

For a moment, Violet simply stares into the deadly void thrust toward her. Bewitched and ensnared by the grinning maw that she is keenly aware could end her in an instant should the raider behind the glock have an itchy trigger finger. Helpless to do much more than watch and wait, the moment drags on agonizingly slowly for a dozen throbs of her heart. Eventually, the weapon is drawn back and holstered at the mercenary's hip and dark, dangerous eyes observe the imprisoned teen as she swallows thickly at the saliva that fled her mouth and gathered in her throat.

Lilly simply twitched an eyebrow in a wordless assessment of her prisoner. Now that the girl was more lucid and clearly more aware of her situation, if the hardening of pale green eyes and the tensing of her undernourished frame were any indication, her suitability as a new candidate for the Delta's military division would be more evident. And Minerva's possible lies to try and save her former girlfriend more obvious.

The woman shifts her stance from one of military stiffness and dominance into one of casual lounging. Bracing her right arm to the bars to cushion her brow as she leans against the barred door, her left hand stuffed deeply in her jacket pocket. While the rigidity of her body had eased, the cold tinge to her smirk remained. "Finally on your feet I see."

Violet bristles under the woman's smug tone and cold eyes. Her skin crawls and blood itches, as though insects swarm beneath her flesh, and her rebellious teenage nature insists that she sit, simply to spite the woman and her assumed authority. But the strange feeling that the woman stirs up in her continues to churn around in Violet's belly. Curbing her disobedience but not her tongue or her smirk as she notes the shadow of discomfort that shifts across Lilly's face. A subtle ripple of flesh tightening the woman's lips and the twitch beneath her eye as she discretely rolls the stiffness from her right shoulder.

The shoulder that Violet had loosed an arrow into two weeks prior.

Lilly's own gaze sweeps over the captive teenager in the cell, her pained smirk spreading wider as she draws her hand from her left pocket. Lilly had caught the minute curve that twitches at the corners of Violet's mouth and follows the satisfied flicker in the girl's gaze as it settled on her injured shoulder momentarily before darting away, and now, as she raises the apple fished from her pocket to her mouth, her calculating eyes observe the bolstered confidence in the blonde's posture with a predatory interest.

"You have a sharp eye." Lilly's words come muffled from around the crunch of sweet and tart flesh as her teeth sank through the skin of the apple. Hand pausing only to tap her knuckle to her wounded shoulder, indicating that she'd caught Violet's wandering eye. "Either that or you got off a lucky shot."

Violet simply scowls darkly at her captor, making no effort to move beyond folding her arms across her chest, guarding herself against the goading voice. "_You _got lucky. I was aiming for your head."

Cheeks filled and jaw working, Lilly crunches up the mouthful. With every chew her mouth opens, treating Violet to a view of partially masticated fruit and the gross, wet smack of her lips. After a handful more chews she swallows and swipes the back of a hand across her mouth, eyes the fruit and takes a second swinging bite as she sneers. "So, shit aim and a lucky shot."

The blonde's narrow hip cocked to the side with a shift of her weight, eyes rolling and her words come clipped and cold as she scoffs. "Slide your gun in here and I'll show you just how shit a shot I am."

Lilly threw her head back and laughed at that proposal. Not the same dusky, throaty chuckle that Violet has heard before, bouncing down the corridor from the galley where the rations were held, but a loud and mocking bray that dripped derision. The laughter ends as suddenly as it began and Lilly's dark eyes narrow, hardening instantly and met Violet's challenging expression with her own severe one.

"You had your chance, more than one actually, and you fucked up." Her words carry with them the subtle hint of anger, echoing the emotion that her features contorted into. "You don't get any more."

The dark light that sparks behind Lilly's eyes chilled Violet to the bone and she felt her whole body instinctively tense beneath the threat, thinly veiled among words that could easily be seen as a passing comment. She casts her gaze to her feet and considers the statement warily, her chest tightening as her fury slowly churns alongside the first stirrings of dread.

She feels trapped. Not just by the bars that keep her caged like some feral junkyard dog -showing her teeth to her master in fear and rage- but also by the careful isolation that Lilly has implemented over the last twenty four hours. Ever since she regained consciousness, Violet has neither seen nor heard from or of Omar and Aasim beyond the basic knowledge of them also being captives. And even Minnie has been strangely absent.

Only the mean and dangerous faces of Lilly's people have been her company, watching her, leering at her, as they came to her in strange rotating shifts that were never equal in length, and they always, _always _drew her attention them. If she had been dozing when the guard had passed, she was sharply woken with a curt shout or heel slamming the door. When she had to reluctantly force herself to squat over the piss bucket in the darkened corner, her eyes had lifted at a sharp whistle only to find some greasy creep watching her, his cruel eyes dancing in grotesque delight and his lips twisted up in a perverse grin. And now, finally, the isolation from her friends and her home, the violations to her dignity and pride were taking their toll on her mental state.

Lilly knew what she was doing.

She was furious and scared, frantic and humiliated… And completely alone.

Thunk.

An apple, the half eaten apple that had been in Lilly's hand just moments ago, rolls across the cell floor, stopping only as it bumps against Violet's boot, bitten side down. The teen's eyes flicker down, her lips pressing together in disdain at the offering.

"Eat it."

Violet rolls her eyes from the partially eaten fruit resting against her foot and over to Lilly, peering through the bars at her. Taking in the smug twist painting her lips and sinister shadows that shift in those dangerous, dark eyes. Violet suppresses the cold chill that floods her bloodstream as she feels her whole body snap rigid. Some primitive instinct catching on the subtle threat in the body language of the more dominant woman. Her movements slow as she draws her arms up around herself, shoulders hunching and the emotion in her eyes clouding over. Her mental defenses slam back into place and begin to reconstruct around her, shutting down and shutting away her vulnerability as quickly as possible and replacing it with a feeble flare of defiance.

Lilly's smirk lessened then. Her lashes lower and her tongue clicks in a mocking, scolding tone, almost as though she were reprimanding a disobedient toddler for turning their nose up at their vegetables as she shakes her head slowly. "We don't waste food at the Delta. Scraps get fed to the pigs." Her shuttered lashes part again, to better scrutinize her young potential recruit, and that smug grin crawls back into place on her mean and twisted features. "So, you pick that up and eat it!"

"I'm not hungry." The teen winces at the nervous quiver in her voice. Strained under the suffocating swell of fear and betrayal. The slow comprehension of just how dire her situation truly was finally seeping into her thoughts and settling weightily in her chest. Passing her tongue over her dry lips the blonde croaks. "And I'm not Delta."

"Yet."

That single word hangs ominously in the air between them and sends a violent chill through the blonde.

The tight fist that has been balled in her chest since Lilly had appeared outside her cell tightens further and something in her rational mind finally snaps. With a confused and strangled snarl of anger, tinged with unfettered fear, Violet burst forward and snatches up the fruit in one hand as her fingers on the other curl around the heavy steel door barring her path. A defiant and challenging light ignites in the smokey gray undertones of the peridot green of her eyes. "Ever!"

Lilly doesn't move. Doesn't even flinch at the seething teens charge. She simply slouches there, watching her, dark lashes slipping over dirty brown orbs rhythmically as she breathed out two words that carry more menace and malice than they had right to. "We'll see."

For a beat or two the adult and teen simply stand there, scowling at each other, nose to throat, before Violet swings her jaw wide and savagely bites into the half eaten apple. And, despite herself, finds herself relishing the tanging sweetness of the fruit as its ripe flesh breaks easily beneath her sharp teeth.

Wet and crisp, the soft crunch fills her ears as the rich flavor of the fruit fills her mouth and sends her salivary glands into overdrive.

She'd never have imagined just how much she'd miss fruits and vegetables in her diet until the apocalypse hit. She hasn't tasted fruit in several years, not since her fifteen year old self had stumbled upon vaguely familiar berries in the forest. In her adolescent haste, she had snagged a handful of what she had wrongly assumed to be huckleberries to sample, only to be quickly disappointed by the bitter taste that burned her lips and tongue. Her disappointment was swiftly followed by regret when a horrified Ruby informed her that she had actually eaten Virginia creeper berries and, within the hour, a firestorm of nauseous agony had cramped her belly, taken her to her knees and a mortifying case of the shits had her doubled over for days.

Since then, she'd stuck to the familiar wild vegetables, nettles and edible flowers like dandelions that Omar would collect. So the clean taste of apple that teases Violet's tongue is both heavenly and torturous, and she so badly wants to swallow. But the glint of triumph in Lilly's eye and the gloating smirk on her lips is infuriating her beyond all reason. Prickling her irritation into rage. So she slows her chewing and narrows her eyes, fixing her sight on Lilly's as she arcs her head back, hawks together the mess of pulped up apple and phlegm into her mouth and spits. Violet allows herself a moment to enjoy the satisfaction of watching the mess splatter the bitch's face and slither down her chin before she hurls the remainder of the apple as hard as she can through the bars, wild fury blazing in her green eyes.

"Fuck you!"

An instant later Violet's head snaps to the side. The fury in her eyes dampening as they widen in shock, her cheek burning beneath the stinging slap of the military woman's hand. Stumbling backwards a step, Violet raises her shaking fingers to graze her reddened skin as she stares with unabashed wonder at the the tall figure of her captor drawing back her hand through the bars and glaring hatred at her.

"You ungrateful little shit!" The contorting rage in Lilly's face is terrifying. Twisting up her features into inhuman grimaces and bestial snarls. But what terrifies the teen more so is the way that the darkened fury suddenly ebbs, how the lips carve upwards cruelly and the calculating gleam in her eye swallows up the hardened edges to the muddied discs. "Dorian!"

"Ma'am?" A gruff, disembodied voice drifts from the galley end of the corridor, followed by the reverberating squeals of a protesting chair being roughly shoved backwards and the thuds of heavy boots slowly journeying down the narrow walkway.

"How are we faring for firewood?" Lilly lifts her arm to her face and scrubs her sleeve against the mess of Violet's saliva and rejected apple. Her dark eyes flicker to the side, guiding the blonde's own as she delivers her questions to her subordinate in a voice that was deceptively light and unsettlingly placid. "For the engines?"

A dark-skinned women, hard faced and dead eyed, eases partially into sight to stand at Lilly's side. A raider that stirs up a vague sense of recognition in Violet's mind, but not enough for her to confidently place her in her clouded memories. The new mercenaries fingers flex menacingly around the grip of her rifle and her eyes, bottomless pits of shadows, harden as she watches Lilly scuff at her face with her sleeve one final time before she responds. "We ain't low. But ain't a bad idea to get more in, b'fore the herd circles back around."

Lilly's gaze swings back around, her eyes catching and holding Violet's eye-line as the corners of her mouth twitch upwards in a knowing grimace. Stepping back on her heel, the woman turns to leave. "Find Minerva. Tell her she has a job to do." She pauses and delivers one final glance toward the captive blonde before she vanishes from sight, leaving only her parting words in her wake. "And bring the girl up to the main deck after. There's something she needs to learn."

A rough, unexpected shove between her shoulders sends Violet pitching forward. Deep rooted instincts have her throwing out her lead foot in a valiant effort to correct her balance while her arms; zip-tied at the wrist and twisted up against her spine, strain painfully, uselessly, to come to her front to catch herself and break her fall should she trip. A few uneven trotting steps keep the blonde upright but did little to ease the discomfort of the anxious knots coiling in her belly. Or to soothe the way that her heart flutters in her throat as though it were a panic stricken bird in a feather storm of motion, clamoring for freedom.

"Getchyer ass movin', girl."

Chest heaving and her temper short from the adrenaline singing through her veins, Violet throws a scowl over her shoulder. Her sharp gaze catching on the dark, almost black, eyes that peer coldly at her from beneath hooded brows and the thick lips that purse together in a tight emotionless line. "Lilly don't like t'be kept waitin'."

The derisive scoff rolls off of Violet's tongue and out of her mouth before she can think to prevent it, only for the arrogant sound to be rewarded with a second sharp shove, this time from the sinister maw of the rifle at her back instead of a hand. Catching herself from the stumble for a second time and not willing to risk a third, the teen lowers her gaze and watches her feet take the steps that carry her further from her cell and closer to the main deck where Lilly would be waiting for her.

Dorian's steps echo around her as they fall with the confidence of someone who knows that they are large and more heavily armed than their prisoner. Someone who considers themselves untouchable. And, to Violet's dismay, she finds her own feet awkwardly mimic the strange rhythm. Like she was someone who was still learning military discipline, manipulated by the strange and uncomfortable marching quality and adapting her steps to match of Dorian's own.

Like a good little soldier.

Her heart clenches at that thought. Something so insignificant such as her footfalls matching those of her companion's being turned upon her cuts her as sharply as any blade. No longer an endearing little quirk that a younger Minnie had declared to be cute as she had dropped her first shy kiss to her nose. No longer a sign of the companionable ease she had felt with Clementine as they strode back through the iron gates of Ericson's after clearing a path through the walkers for their stranded hunting party. Now it carries with it the ominous undertones of a future she doesn't want and hasn't asked for. Something she feels powerless to stop.

And that terrifies her.

Her lips tighten into a colourless line, her bound hands clenching and unclenching into fists at her back and she is so twisted up in her miserable thoughts and memories that she almost misses the strange rumble of multiple footsteps echoing down the corridor. A corridor that should have been empty save for herself and her escort.

Daring to lift her gaze just enough to peer through her lashes, Violet feels her heart stutter as relief floods through her. Moving toward her, bound by their own wrists, are Aasim and Omar. Alive and mostly unharmed. Though, even from this distance the blonde can easily make out the blossoming bruise that discolours Aasim's jaw and the limp in Omar's uneven pace from the bullet wound in his knee, and then she sees the terror in their roving eyes. A terror that, as soon as those frantic orbs land on Violet's face and spy her lips parting, had both boys silently shaking their heads and turning away from her.

And it hurts. Her whole body seems to spasm, tensing up as though wracked by simultaneous cramps as her friends, her family of the last eight years, turn away from her. It hurt her to flinch away from her two almost brothers as they pass her. Away from their silence so palpable that feels as though the air is too thick and her airway too narrow for her to breathe properly. And it hurts as she lowers her own head in defeat.

Her desire to keep fighting is ebbing. It would be so much easier if she simply gave up.

So Violet keeps her head hung low, her eyes glued to her feet bobbing in and out of view as she continues to trek miserably toward the bow of the ship, toward Lilly. Only glancing up when she hears a cacophony of voices barking orders, affirming said orders as all meld together with the gut chilling hiss of an enraged walker and rushing water.

"Michael! Get that rope on it!"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Gad! Watch your aim! It'll be useless if you put that through its head… fucking idiot." The last two words are muttered as Lilly twists her head over her shoulder. Her focus shifting away from directing her men as her lips part into a wide and sickeningly sweet smile as soon as her gaze falls to the bound teenager. "Ah, Violet, wasn't it? I do hope you'll forgive me, I am so very bad with names."

Her lips creep higher as she holds her hand up, halting her men in their duties before she turns. Taking in the minuscule tremble that shivers through her captive before directing the blonde's gaze toward the bloated, waterlogged living corpse, now dangling just barely below the upper guard rail. Its arms are secured down by thick cords of rope and a harpoon skewered through its cheek directs its gnashing teeth. "I thought you might be interested in joining us for a spot of fishing. Minerva told us so many stories of how good a fisher-woman you were for the school, so I thought perhaps it might serve a good bonding experience for you and me. You see…"

And suddenly Lilly is right there, clearing her throat unsettlingly close behind Violet's ear. The rough sound stirring up an icy chill and sending it flooding through her thrumming blood just as the muscles in her shoulders bunch up against the steel grip of the woman's hand on the back of her neck. "While I've found your fighting back to be... _amusing_, my patience is fast running out. And when it does, well-"

Cruel amusement touches Lilly's dark eyes as her grip on the thin neck has Violet's chin tilting toward her. Finally finding the terror that she wants to see in those wide, green eyes as the blonde quickly realizes the scene about to unfold. Lilly has her attention now, all that is needed is one final push. "You won't like the consequences."

Her hand shoots upwards. Fingers twisting tightly into the girl's blonde hair and gripping as she pulls her around and ignores the desperate pleas that rip from Violet's throat. The hardened woman hauls and drags the stumbling teen across the deck before forcing and pinning her between her own large frame and the snarling creature dragged up from the murk of the riverbed. Still swinging gently against the hull like some grisly pinata.

"The Delta breaks everyone eventually, Violet." Violet can barely make out Lilly's cold words as they twirl about her ears. Mingling with a dark chuckle that rumbles deep in the woman's throat and warping it into a sound that's almost akin to the guttural growl of the walker snapping up at the blonde bent over the rail.

Lilly digs her nails into Violet's scalp and raises her knee to press painfully against her back, stilling the frantic struggling beneath her and forcing the girls face even closer to the bloated walkers swinging jaws.

"Question is, what will it take to break _you? _Should I take your finger? Cut out that sharp little tongue of yours? How about the lives of the friends you came in with? Or your precious Minnie? Or maybe... Clementine?"

Her eyes screw shut against the nightmarish creature that writhes furiously beneath her and, with the woman's sinister words eddying around her ears, Violet twists wildly in Lilly's grasp. She doesn't recognize the voice that echoes around her skull, the shrill and desperate cries that punctuate Lilly's own voice, but she does recognize the humiliating burn in her throat that tells her that the screams are her own.

She wants to fight. To scowl. To meet Lilly's eye with defiance and prove that she is the hardened survivor that she has grown into... but she can't.

She can't suppress the terror that rolls off of her in crushing waves. Can't stop the quivering whimpers that dribble from her lips and she can't hide the trembling of her body as the woman holds her there. Her cheek just barely out of reach of the deadly swinging jaws. Violet can't even stop her body from falling rigid at the sensation of something warm and slimy barely tracing over her cheek, frozen when she realizes it to be the tip of the walkers protruding tongue, straining for a taste of warm meat. As she waits for the teeth to slam shut and tear the flesh from her face, the harpoon speared through the walkers own rotting cheek twists, yanking its face aside and ensuring that the deadly teeth remain just barely out of reach of her. Though the distance is not so great as to prevent her gagging on the putrid stench of rot and mold that waft over her face and filled her nose in hot growling blasts.

"No matter what it takes, I promise you, it won't be quick. And it won't be painless. I will let your friends turn and leave you to clean up the mess your stubbornness made." Lilly whispered in a voice so low that Violet has to stifle her shudder. It almost feels as though the words were oozing directly into her mind like venom. It was a subtle motion that didn't go unnoticed by the mercenary; whose smirk carves a deeper crease upon her face. "Or, you can save them. You can save all of them. All you have to do is stop fighting me."

A string of curses rents the air. Drawing Violet's attention away from Lilly and her threats, to the flurry of motion that was suddenly unfolding around her. Surprise shorts out her intelligence and fear renders her unable to decipher the clamoring words into a dialect that she can understand. All that she does understand amid the chaos, was the wet, sticky sound of rancid flesh tearing and the excited howl of a walker baring down on its prey.

Heat licks through Violet's veins as her blood thrummed through her temple, and ice slams into her belly; cold and numbing, as comprehension floods into her startled eyes. Her knees buckle beneath her in an attempt to drop her but her body remains bent against the rails. Lilly's knee, still dug in her spine, preventing her from crumpling to the deck.

"Shit!"

The fingers twisting tightly in her hair grip more firmly and snaps her head backwards. Cutting off her panicked screams as her throat constricts under the violent motion and she is hurled clear of the deadly gnashing teeth. Scalp stinging and her coordination clumsy, Violet scrambles to kick herself further away from the scene unfolding in front of her. Further away from Lilly as she bends herself over the rail and digs her clawed fingers into bedraggled creatures rotting scalp. Her vision blurring under the sting of terrified tears as she catches sight of the dozen blonde strands dangling from Lilly's outstretched fingers that gesture wildly between the teenager and Dorian before she reaches for the knife sheathed at her thigh.

"This recruitment pitch is over! Take her back down to the cells!"

The soft indigo's of twilight gradually stole away the muted golden hues of the day. And, as the light ebbed, so did the suns warmth until all that was left was the chill that rolls up over the glassy black water and carries with it the promise of a cold night to come.

Tonight, as she patrols the narrow corridors of the ship, Minerva's footsteps aren't so strident. Almost completely devoid of her usual confident tread and with little evidence of the military discipline instilled into her over the year. But she pays it little mind as she increases her pace to a brisk saunter, too lost inside her head where her thoughts are in chaos, a maelstrom of contradictions and conflicting emotions.

Finding Louis alive and learning that Tennessee was safe; hearing who all had survived the raid had eased the strange and unsettling sensation that had engulfed her chest ever since her time spent with Violet. It was almost as though there has been a boot crushing down on her sternum ever since she'd left the Delta and now, knowing that the three held in their cells were not all who remained of her old group, she found she could breathe properly again.

But the heart warming reunion between friends had been short lived, the mood quickly turning sour as the conversation naturally progressed to talk of the attack. Minerva's soft, open expression had hardened and chilled the moment the new kid, Clementine, had taken control of the narrative and redirected it to the welfare of the Delta's captives. The arrogance in the younger teens stance, her dominant posturing and intense golden glare as she spoke, immediately had the redhead curling her lip and returning the scowl with one of her own.

_"We had to fight." _

_"No. You didn't. Clementine knew that, and she made you fight anyway." _

_"That is some grade-A horseshit. Clem saved us." _

The words from their argument fluttered formlessly about her ears, but her skin prickled against one intrusion even more so, like feather light touches cautiously tracing over a raw wound. A tentative invitation issued by Clementine herself.

_"It's not too late, Minnie. You could come back to the school with us." _

It had unsettled her even more so than the resurfacing of her fondness for Violet, and her temper had shortened considerably with the strange discomfort that was coiling her guts up into knots.

Fucking Clementine!

Sinking her teeth into the inside of her cheek, Minerva forces herself to move just a little faster, breaking into an easy jog. Slowing her pace only to avoid tripping up stair cases or to nimbly slip past her people as she hauls herself around corners. Pausing just long enough to slap on the occasional storm lantern strung to the pipes and hooked into the steam fed generator.

When Minerva ducks down the dimly lit corridor of hastily converted cell,s her heart is pounding and her breathing is sightly labored from strange urgency that drives her movements. Her eyes dart away from the huddled figures of Omar and Aasim; curled up in the corners of their cell, and across to the other occupied one that held their final captive. She peers inside the barren room where her shadow, coupled with the lack of proper lighting mingles with the darkness of the night that spills inside and swallows everything inside. Everything, save for the ashen blonde hair turned pale blue, bathed in the soft glow of the moonlight.

Minerva leans in close, her fingers curling around the bars and voice pitching low as she called out to the girl caged inside. "Violet?"

No response. Just the slender body shrinking smaller, curling in further on itself.

"Vi. Come on. I need to talk to you… it's important." Leaning back and stealing a careful glance toward the galley, ensuring that none of her companions had rotated in to watch their new recruits, Minerva huffs out a sharp breath in a silent sigh. Pressing closer and dropping her tone a little more the redhead hisses.

"It's about Clementine."

Minerva sees the way that the muscles in Violet's shoulders jump, sees the sedate way that she lifts herself onto her feet, and her chest tightens unpleasantly as she watches the slow shambling way that the blonde moves. Her steps short and stuttering, as if she were in a stupor, replacing the familiar temperamental swagger that usually carried her.

Silently, Violet halts her travels and settles herself, still shrouded in shadows, against the cell wall. Her thin arms thread together over her chest as her jaw shifts, teeth worrying her lower lip as a spark of something flickers within the shadows of her hooded gaze. Minerva can feel the unease thrumming from her former girlfriend's hunched frame, thickening in the air until she can almost taste her fear. Every movement, every motion she makes is carefully considered, calculated and cautiously executed. And when Violet's eyes finally slide over to the redhead, the hollow gaze elicits a chill to flood through her veins as she struggles to pin those darting orbs with her own.

"Clem?" She looks so broken. So hollow. Like a wraith. A shell of the girl she had once been.

"She was out there. Skulking around." The young mercenary's voice falters as she finds herself holding Violet's vacant stare. Sees a glowing ember capture the banked emotions and ignite the silver that edged the watercolour green into something hopeful. Minerva feels her own gaze harden at that, feels her lip curl as the next words left her lips on an undercurrent of spite. "She's not coming back for you, Vi. It's suicide."

"You don't know that." Pale lashes slip over shifting eyes as Violet's voice catches in her throat, closing for a moment before flickering wide, the ember burning in them a little brighter and her voice a little stronger. "Why else would she be out there?"

"Hell if I know." The redhead scoffs, her lips curling into a grim smirk. "The girl put a damned knife to my throat. Doesn't exactly strike me as someone playing with a full deck, y'know?"

Violet drops Minerva's gaze for a moment and takes a small, shaky breath. She's hesitant seeming to consider her words, until she lifts her eyes once more. "And Lilly is?" Her fingers flex and curl around her biceps, rubbing the thin worn out fabric that covers them idly between her thumb and forefinger. "Because I'd take Clem's brand of crazy over Lilly's sanity any day."

Shit! Lilly.

If Lilly knew… If Minnie reported sighting Clementine so close to the ship...

It took a moment for Violet's thoughts to pierce the mist of panic that descends in her mind like static and another moment for them to settle long enough for her to form her next words, a concerned question that she blurts as soon as they came to her. "Minnie? Did you..." She shivers, gasping and gulping down painfully large mouthfuls of air in a vain attempt to ease the rapid rise and fall of her chest. "Did you tell Lilly that you saw her?"

Minerva's brow furrows, marring her pale skin, confused when Violet refuses to look her in the eye.

"What does it matter? We're coming back to take the rest of them in a couple of weeks." Then she notices, even through the gloom, that her ear tips appear slightly reddened, somewhat heated and her movements were cautious, guarded as she aimed her gaze anywhere but at her.

That had been the moment; as Violet avoided her eyes and a hint of a blush had settled across her sharp cheekbones, that Minerva decided that the younger teen was hiding something from her.

"Shit. You… you like her, don't you?" The redhead's voice comes low and monotonous, with an undertone that almost bordered on dangerous. A shrug of the blonde's shoulders, a shift of her attention and Minerva felt a pang of irritation twinge behind her ribs. And then her irritation flares into an anger that she firmly decides was to be directed at both the girl behind the bars and the girl she'd met in the woods. "You _do _."

Violet swallows. Hard. And nods slowly.

Minerva gave a single bark of laughter in response to the feeble admission. "Nice to know I'm replaceable."

The blonde cringes, flinching under the bitterness in Minerva's voice. "That's not fair! I thought you were gone. I was told you were dead. And Clem…" Violet draws a shuddering breath and wraps her arms tighter around herself, tears stinging behind her lashes as she blinks furiously. "It was nice having someone to talk to again. Nice not feeling so god damned alone."

"Nice while it lasted you mean." Minerva can't prevent the sneer edging into her voice, doesn't even try to, as she folds her arms over her chest. "Because I'm looking around and you seem pretty fucking alone to me. No Clementine in there keeping you company. No Clementine coming to save you." Her voice softens then, her lips pulling into a tight, grim smirk. "Louis looked pretty chummy with her though. Real cozy. Had each others backs out there. Guessing they did during the raid too. Let the pawns take the blows while the king and queen watch. Face it, Vi. She played you."

"That's not…" Violet desperately blinks back tears as the familiar buzzing haze of confusing images and conflicting emotion fogs her mind again. Of relief chilling into icy fear. Eyes of gold turning from her and a mist of crimson spraying into the air across the yard. Of flames swallowed up in pain and darkness. "That's not what happened. You don't understand-"

"No! You don't understand!" Minerva spat. Her hand shot out to grab hold of the bars as she moves closer, even as Violet shrinks back into shadows. Backing away from the onslaught. "You think they care? They don't! I've tried your way. Their way. Tried to fight the wrong people. Tried to leave the Delta. All it accomplished was…" She shook her head slowly, eyes closing as her tone softens. "Getting Sophie killed."

Something twists sharply behind Violet's ribs, a flutter of sympathy for the devastated girls hidden behind the anger. "Minnie… I-"

But Minerva interrupts her sharply, almond shaped eyes hardening and voice chilling once more. "For someone so convinced she's not a soldier, you sure were quick to march into war for your general. For Clementine."

Unable or unwilling to meet Minerva's cold eyes again, Violet shifts her gaze to a spot over her shoulder, her voice barely a whisper. "Clem taught us to protect ourselves. To survive. A bunch of kids left-"

Rifle shots explode in the stillness of the night, tearing through Violet's words and bouncing along the corridor, ringing around the small cell until each shot sounds like fifty.

A harsh cry goes up then and footsteps thunder across the decks as Delta soldiers fall instinctively to their posts.

Minerva's own focus darts away from her former lover as a broiling wave of hisses and snarls rolls up over the ship and, through the din, Lilly's voice slices clear and crisp and loud.

"Get rid of those fucking walkers!"

Minerva immediately steps back on her heel, her training under the Delta's regime flinging her into action and has her hearing sharpening, awaiting her commander's voice to call for all hands. Snatching up her crossbow, the youngest mercenary checks the tension of the string and cables, ensures the bows built in quiver was fully loaded.

"Grow up, Violet! None of us are kids. Not anymore. We're survivors. Survivors are soldiers. If you're not a soldier then you're dead!" Sliding her boot through the weapon's cocking stirrup, the redhead drags the string back and loaded up the first bolt before her narrowed eyes dart back to the blonde. "And the sooner you figure that shit out the better because, pretty soon, something will decide to bitch-slap you and force you to take notice of what's happening outside of that delusional little bubble inside your head."

And then she was gone. Racing away to aid her people and leaving Violet alone once again.

The firestorm of bullets has ebbed to almost nothing now and Violet is painfully aware that her tensing against the shaking of her limbs is useless. But still she does. Instinctively trying to suppress, if only for a few moments more, what she knows she can't. In her mind she was falling; fingers groping for a crevice, a foothold, just something, anything for her to catch and hold onto.

But no matter how she tries to twist and turn, or reach out into the darkened abyss, she finds nothing. There is no one here to catch her, nothing to break her final descent into the yawning chasm that her own mind had eroded into her psyche, just the blackness of the void below the edge that Lilly had held her over and Minnie had shoved her into.

So she continues to plummet. Until voices pierce through the darkness that is intent to swallow her up.

Voices she knows.

"Louis, give me a hand."

"Yeah, sure."

The screams of rusted hinges shatter the serenity of the silence and drags her from her morbid thoughts, as the door to her cage was slowly pried open. The narrow streams of light, bladed by the bars, gracefully meanders together into a wave that bathes the room, only broken by the shadows that quickly follow the light inside.

And Violet holds her breath. Not daring to make a sound, hoping her silence would deter the intruder she knows from searching her out.

Every second that passes felt like an eternity as she sits, curled around her knees, perfectly still and listens to the footsteps that move deeper into her space, closer to her, the heavy boots muting the sound of her pulse pounding in her ears.

"Violet?"

She recognizes the soothing voice. But she wishes that she didn't.

_No! _

Her gut clenches down so hard that she gasps. Her lids slam shut as the boots scuff their way over the floor, moving slowly. She mentally counts to thirty, pauses and debates cracking a lid...

"Violet!"

Her mind churns as she tucks her limbs tighter beneath herself, curling into a tiny ball of misery.

_Go away… please! _

"Violet. Come on!"

The heat from the fingers that touch her, that curl firmly around her bicep, creeps into her consciousness and she feels the overwhelming urge to pull away. After everything that has happened to her since the night of the attack, she can't stomach the idea of being touched, not right now. She no longer feels the comforting intimacy in the touch, but more the invasion and the want to dominate her.

As the fingers around her arm tighten her eyes snap open, pupils dilating wide and darting wildly as she desperately searches for an escape even as she feels herself being gently turned…

… Until the touch slides away from her arm and Clementine's body crumples with a soft grunt, stunned by the vicious blow that robs her of her consciousness.

Behind her, Violet can hear Louis's surprise, can hear the betrayal seep in to his voice and smother the original emotion as Minnie's own voice breaks under her demands and threats.

Peering over her shoulder, her brows tugging low over eyes of silver green, Violet catches Louis's eyes and allows the soft brown orbs to guide her in their darting path. His jaw is clenched as his sight drags from the loaded crossbow shoved into his face. She follows when they fall to Clementine's still form, hand stretched out beside her, before they lift and find her own eyes, drawing so wide to where she can almost feel his desperate pleadings for her to help him puzzle out why Minnie was doing this, eddying around her skull as loudly as if he had screamed the words.

But Lilly's threats have her broken and fearful, and Minnie's cutting sneers have her bound, so much so that Violet is hesitant to move. Instead she simply watches as the lanky teen and small child are shepherded from her cell and into what she assumes is another before she chances a glance back to the fallen girl behind her.

Clementine's dark lashes flutter against her cheeks as her eyes dart beneath the shuttered lids, her breathing is shallow and even, punctuated with soft little mumbles that sound suspiciously like the fractured syllables of her name.

It's only when Minnie's footsteps recede into silence that Violet cautiously turns around, slowly shifting herself backwards until her spine is flush against the wall. Unperturbed by the cold steel leeching her body warmth or the way her blood wraps the icy touch around her heart as she simply watches the unconscious teen in silence. Counting her breaths as the minutes drag on, until as the final gunshot wearily reverberates into the night and Clementine's prone form shifts.

Her lashes part slowly as she groans and lifts herself up just high enough to dig her elbows into the floor and prop herself up properly. Fever bright amber peer blearily along the length of her body toward the door, sagging little lower on her elbows before her head tilts over her shoulder and her sights fall to Violet.

"Vi?" Raising herself up onto her knees, Clementine winces as a ripple of vertigo seizes her guts and needles of pain prick behind her eyes and set her teeth on edge as she swivels around to face the blonde fully. "What happened? Are you ok?"

The eyes that peer back at her from the darkness are lifeless and dull. The spark, that had once been a vibrant flame that radiated such warmth and vitality, almost entirely snuffed out. The wretched thing that gazed at her, that shrank further away from her, arms around her knees and nails digging into her own skin, was not the same Violet she had known.

"Violet, talk to me..." Silence. Save for the shudder of Violet's breath and the whisper of fabrics shifting with the barely there motion of the body beneath the layers as she turns away. "We're here to take you home."

"I looked for you! When they grabbed me I saw... you let them take me!" The words that came next, that leapt from Violet's mouth, were ones that slam Clementine's thoughts to a stall. Her jaw tightens and her gaze darts away from the storm of heartbreak that turns the green eyes dull. Away from the naked betrayal and the emotion, once so guarded and now stripped bare to scrutinized and ridiculed without mercy. And then she is stunned by words that she never thought she'd ever hear, unable to do much else but stare as Clementine realizes that Violet, her strong and fierce Violet, is wilting.

"I'm just supposed to forget that because you're here now? Some fucking feelings you had for me."

Violet looks so utterly defeated. Her presence hollow and spirit broken. And Clementine finds herself hating that she has no idea how to fix this. "I'm so sorry, Violet. It was a mistake. Louis needed help. He wouldn't have stood a chance against these guys. I knew you could fight back."

_"Louis looked pretty chummy with her though. Real cozy. Face it, Vi. She played you." _

Violet tries to quiet the dark little voice that has been whispering it's twisted little secrets into her thoughts ever since she had been taken. Frustrated as she finds herself unable to block her ears to the cruel mockery as it intertwines Minerva's sharp words and Lilly's threats, twisting them up into Clementine's own, and serves only to add fuel to their quarrel now. Angering her as it confuses her further, and she instinctively projects her frustration as a shield. "Yeah, sure."

"What's wrong with you, Vi? Come on, let's get the hell out of here."

_"You think they care? They don't!" _

As much as she wishes otherwise, as much as she had struggled against acknowledging it, Lilly has her cowed. And it terrifies her just how easy it was to finally admit it. To give the words her voice. "No, Clem. I'm done. This whole situation is so fucked! At least here I have Minnie-"

"You mean the Minnie that betrayed us?"

"Don't act like you know her. She tried to escape. Her and Sophie…" Violet's eyes are hard staring and unblinking as her voice trails into silence; lost to her thoughts for a moment.

_"I've tried your way. Their way. Tried to fight the wrong to leave the Delta. All it accomplished was…Getting Sophie killed." _

_"The Delta breaks everyone eventually, Violet. Question is, what will it take to break you? Should I take your finger? Cut out that sharp little tongue of yours? How about the lives of the friends you came in with? Or your precious Minnie? Or maybe... Clementine!" _

"They said if I fight back… they'd kill Minnie. Or one of you. If you fuck this up worse… I'll stop you myself."

When Violet turns her eyes away from her, it's agonizingly slow, like they're heavy, an effort for her to move. Whatever Lilly had done to her, whatever games Minerva had played, Violet is completely ensnared and the girl that Clementine cares for, the girl that she kissed and confessed feelings for beneath a blanket of shimmering stars is fading before her eyes.

It's like Violet has simply crawled right back inside that same invisible shell that Clementine spent these past weeks coaxing her from, pushing herself in so deeply that Clementine is certain the blonde may be unreachable.

But there is a chance for her to come back still.

Clementine knows strength can't come from within someone so broken and defeated as Violet, it has to enter from the outside. She's seen it before, with Kenny after he lost Katjaa and Duck, and again when he had lost Sarita. It may have taken a little time, but firm words had dragged him out and made him fight again. So, maybe, all Violet needed was for someone to follow her in her fall and cut her free from whatever noose was dragging her down so she could kick her way back to the surface.

"Fine. Stay here then. But I'm bringing everyone else home."

When Violet looks to the brunette, Clementine's regret is immediate and consuming. "Until you decide you don't want them around anymore, either." It's like the fire in Violet's eyes has been smothered by ice water. Cold and hollow, the vibrant light that had burned so brightly, that had given her so much strength and fierce determination, paling. "Whatever you do, leave me out of it."

The young survivor's blood runs both hot and cold at once as her guts squirm and roll as though maggots have infested her organs. And she realizes, too late, that Violet is not like Kenny. Realizes that her sharp words did indeed cut her free, but now she is simply falling faster, plummeting beyond her reach now. And, in that moment, as again, Violet curls around herself, this time even more tightly than the last. Clementine wishes that she could take the words back, rectify the mistake - the worst of all that she has committed.

Violet had felt her armor crack under Lilly's knee. Felt the woman reach inside her overwhelmed mind and molest her tattered thoughts into even more of a shambled mess with her relentlessness. Never ceasing her twisted assault until only one dark, fucked up affirmation was deposited into her cupped hands, burning its brand into her damaged psyche; that she was still that same helpless, scared little girl dumped outside the gates of Ericson's Academy. That same terrified child deemed unworthy of protection and left to die by the cowardly faculty as they fled to save their own skins. And finally, in her naked vulnerability, she realizes that nothing has changed since that day.

Her parents. Teachers. Marlon and even Clementine... All of them had pretended to care for her, right up until a hard choice had to be made and then they shoved her aside. At least with Lilly there was no pretense. The woman wanted a soldier. Not a friend, not a daughter and certainly not a lover. Just someone to hold a gun and take her orders. Someone who would present her with their obedience and she would repay them with security.

And Minnie had driven the final nail home. That she is still nothing but a pawn, just like in the old world. Something to be sacrificed to save another.

The grief that surges with every expelled breath seizes her by the throat, choking her with a fist that was trying desperately to dissolve into tears. There had been a glimmer of hope before. Just a tiny candle flame flickering against the howling winds and the bleak emptiness in her heart; and she had snuffed it out when she had pushed Clementine away.

Huddled, alone and shrouded by the darkness, her thin arms wrap around her knees and drag them so firmly up against her chest that she can feel every beat of her pounding heart vibrating through her thighs.

Lost amid the sensory overload, she barely feels her teeth tearing at her bottom lip, completely unaware of the damage until the salty tang of copper floods her mouth and coats her tongue.

"I wonder if that's how the twins would tell it?"

"One of them would."

The disembodied voices that penetrate Violet's thoughts are unexpected. Slurring together as though her ears were full of water. The conflicting tones are coarse and grinding and hardened, as they tumble and writhe over and around each other like ravenous things. She is cautious as she picks apart the tangle of words until she catches a voice that she recognizes not just by the dark, low pitch and cruel inflections but also by the way her skin instinctively crawls with the cruel and smug tone that directs her eyes toward the redhead faintly trembling beneath every set of scrutinizing eyes.

"What happened then, Minerva?"

Minerva felt the question coming. The unspoken words sliding thickly along her spine, cold and oozing, a poisonous liquid slowly filling her belly and lungs.

She didn't want to say it. Saying it made it real. She had spent the last three quarters of the year finding some kind of twisted solace in the uncertainty of that night. Allowed herself to believe in the doctored memories that her mind had conjured to defend her from the truth that her heart argued against. Her thoughts replaying that night like some perverted clip show of twisted high-lights.

Now she is stripped of the comfort of confusion, Minerva's eyes dart wildly, unable to settle. Not on the wall, not on Lilly and her sinister smirk, not on Clementine and her amber eyes widening with horrified comprehension, and certainly not on Violet.

_"You have betrayed your home with your selfish cowardice." _

"I…" Minerva can feel Clementine's amber gaze pierce through her. Can feel Violet's expectant gaze pinning her to the spot as firmly as any scowl from Lilly had ever done.

She lowers her gaze to the crossbow in her hands, faintly trembling under the sudden weight of the deadly weapon in her grasp as she trains the loaded bolt on Clementine. Her chest constricting painfully as she recalls the heavy weight of a loaded glock in her hands also trained on the heaving chest of her quarry. Only the eyes that had stared back at her then were not the tawny gold fire that watch her now, but the same ocean blue as her own. Her lashes slid together, her thoughts taking her back to that night.

_A flash of teeth bared wide in a cruel, Cheshire grin. "Children who misbehave must be punished. My trust in you girls is broken and must be earned back." _

_"I… I can't-" _

**_Bang!_**

Minerva takes a steadying breath, sloughing away the softness that she had worn these last forty-eight hours as her lids part and reveal a chilled, hard light that Violet has never seen before. Turning those eyes away the familiar warming blue of tropical seas into foreign chips of glacial ice. And her words, the ones that came next, are as cold as the frigid gales that dominate the arctic tundra, stealing every last trace of warmth from what made Minnie, Minnie, leaving only 'Minerva' in her place. Strong in her conviction, proud of the capabilities learned under the protection of the Delta and, more importantly, still very much alive.

"I killed her."


	3. Strip the petals and watch them fall

Chapter.3: Strip the petals and watch them fall.

_It would be a cold and moonless night tonight. The sky, dark and low, and the air so sharp and bitter that it hurt to breathe. Already, the ground had been laid with frost, a sugar crisp coating over leaf and loom, crunching under the heavy tread of combat boots. The cold, onshore winds blew right through the layers of fraying fabrics of thin sweaters and thick jackets. Chilling skin dampened with sweat and river water alike and seeping in through pores as it bit into warming blood, leaving icy touches and aching bones behind._

_"__You have betrayed your home with your selfish cowardice." Lilly's words were daggers in the darkness and her words venomous. One of the girls before her shrank back, cowed and half-hidden behind her sister. That sister, however, met Lilly's cold expression with eyes blazing in fierce outrage and indignant confidence. "A home that clothed you. Fed you. Kept you safe and warm. Taught you to fight and survive."_

_The woman's dark eyes looked like bottomless pits in the shadows. Black voids, hollow and inhuman. "You spoiled children still think that survival is a fucking right in this world! Well, I'm going to teach you that it's not. This is a world where survival is a privilege. You have to earn the food you put in your bellies and the clothes you cover your backs with. You have to fight for every god given day. And if you don't fight-" The line of the woman's thin lips lift into a sinister sneer. "-well, then you don't deserve to live."_

_Minnie cringed beneath the vicious onslaught, a distressed whimper catching in her throat and escaping her lips in a dry sob, but not Sophie. Sophie stood tall and proud, planting herself between her sister and their captor, uncowed by the accusations and cruel words slicing at them. Her seafoam eyes blaze in fierce outrage and indignant confidence as Lilly plowed on._

_"__Children who misbehave must be punished."_

_Those words made her skin crawl and Minnie could feel needles of ice and flame lancing her belly as fingers of numbing fear slid their touches into her thoughts. Her own mouth opened and closed wordlessly as she saw Lilly's hard dark eyes shift down to settle on her and watched as her mouth, full of spite and threats, curled up in a calculating smirk._

_"__My trust in you girls is broken and must be earned back." The woman's eyes never left Minnie's as her hand went to the holster at her hip and withdrew with her worn glock in hand. Fingers moving confidently as she ejected the clip and slowly began sliding out the rounds, one by one, into her hand until only one remained. Then she methodically replaced the magazine and loaded the single round into the chamber with palpable intent. Lilly's eyes narrowed at Minnie as she extended her arm out, levelling the vicious maw against Sophie's brow. Thin lips baring teeth in a Cheshire grin at the quiet hiccuping gasp that bubbled from the twin's throat as she slid her gaze back up to Sophie._

_The girl was afraid. Lilly could see that in her eyes. It was clear in the way that her pupils had blown so wide they almost swallowed the blue-green irises entirely and how her chest rose and fell in an irregular rhythm. But still, the teen held herself tall, refusing to kowtow to the dangerous woman even with the weapon brushing twisted kisses to her brow._

_"__You don't scare easy." Lilly murmured in some kind of macabre awe even as disappointment flitted over her features. "Such a pity and such a waste. You'd have made one of the finest soldiers the Delta has ever produced. If not for your damned stubbornness."_

_"__I told you that we'd never be your soldiers." Sophie hissed. Despite the tremor in her chest and tremble in her voice, there was no missing the pure strength and conviction that laced her words. "I told you, you'd never have us-" Sophie's lips twitched in a small defiant sneer. "-and you don't. I'd sooner you put me in the ground than fight for you."_

_She saw something in Lilly's eyes shift. A tiny shadow of doubt passing over her features, rippling her cheek and softening the tensing of her trigger finger. A delicate brush of relief touched her thoughts for a second, but that was all because what Sophie heard next made her blood chill and chased the doubt from Lilly's face. Replacing it with an expression that terrified her to her core as she fairly saw the plan forming in the vile woman's mind._

_"__We're sorry, ma'am." Minnie's voice trembled as she spoke. "We'll go back with you. We'll accept whatever punishment you see fit."_

_"__Minnie! Don't-"_

_But Lilly had already turned, facing down the softer twin and scenting her vulnerability. Here was the beta personality to Sophie's alpha one. This she could work with. This one she could break and mold to her will. The twin who had always been a little bit less confident, a little more susceptible. The twin who had sobbed all the way as Marlon had handed them over. Crying for their gentle baby brother. Wailing for her girlfriend to save her like she always had._

_"__Please. Just take us back to the Delta. We can prove we can be trusted."_

_Lilly sucked the air noisily through her teeth. Clicking her tongue and plastering a sickeningly fake sympathetic expression over the twist of malicious intent. "Now, I would love to, Minerva. But you see, Sophie here has you all mixed up with her stories."_

_Minnie's gaze turned to Sophie, her eyes widening in horrified despair. She took slow and careful steps backwards, away from her sister as Sophie's own eyes welled under the look of utter hurt and betrayal, her voice shrivelled in her throat but still, she mouthed to her twin. "That's not true."_

_But Lilly continued. Her voice crooning so softly, so soothingly. So much so that Minnie barely even flinched as Lilly's arm curled around her shoulders and leaned in close to murmur her soft, dark lies directly into her ear. "I bet Sophie told you things, didn't she? That you'd go home? Back to that school. Back to your friends and loved ones. But, do you really think that Marlon would welcome you home? Do you really think that anyone would believe your stories?" She rasped her fingers through the shorn side of Minnie's hair. The touch gentle and motherly and disguising the obvious menace in her words. "You'd be a threat to him. If Marlon doesn't kill you two first, he'll convince the others that you're traitors. That you left of your own will. Can you imagine it? The look of betrayal on poor innocent Tenn's face? How could your dear, sweet little Violet ever trust you again after you abandoned her? No, they wouldn't want you back, they'd be afraid of you."_

_"__Minnie!" Minnie's head snapped up, tears rolling down her cheeks as she saw her distress reflected back at her in Sophie's own glistening eyes. "Don't listen to her! Whatever happened back home, we can fix it."_

_"__Can you?" Lilly purred. Her fingers tightening around Minnie's shoulder and drawing her to stand in front of her. Carefully sliding the glock into the red head's fingers while her eyes fix on Sophie. Her spiteful lips twisting up and her poisonous words oozing. "Can you make them understand? Why would your leader trade you away? Maybe you ran and left them. How could you still be the same girls your friends once knew after months away doing who knows what to survive?" She cupped her palms around Minnie's trembling hands and guided her arms to rise, trailing the muzzle of the glock up the central line of Sophie's torso. "You could go with Sophie, but we both know that you'll both die out there. Or you could come home with me, Minerva. Back to where it's safe and you'll be protected. All you have to do is squeeze that trigger and all will be forgiven."_

_"__Minnie, please. She doesn't know the others, you do." Sophie's voice wavered, her confidence leeching from her stance and words the longer that she faces her armed twin. "You know they'd listen. Brody and Louis. Violet. You know they'd help us."_

_"__Brody? Brody was there!" Minnie whimpered back. "She-she didn't stop him. She didn't even try!"_

_"__She was scared, Min. You know how she gets when she's scared. And Marlon… He was scared too. The same way that you're scared now." She shifted her gaze to Lilly, hardening into a glare as the woman lay her cheek against her twin's temple in an almost motherly gesture. "It's because of her."_

_Lilly could feel the girl quaking in her grasp. Could hear the stuttering gasps of breath and hiccups of terror rattling through Minnie's frame. Carefully, the woman slid her fingers between the trigger guard and Minnie's trembling digits, preventing her from lessening her touch on the trigger, only constricting whenever they tightened. Like an anaconda wrapping its coils around a panicked fawn._

_And then she spoke softly, smoothly. Her words catching in the terrified teen's mind. Toxic whispers murmured so low that only Minnie could hear them. "You can save them, Minerva." She purred. "You can save your brother. Your friends. You can sweep your little girlfriend off her feet for a change. You can all be safe with us, we can make you strong. And you will learn how to recognize who is a threat to yourself, to those you wish to protect." She felt Minnie's fingers twitch beneath hers and immediately her own tightened over them. Her smile chilled, she could feel the tension in the weapon, primed and ready to fire. "Real safety. Real walls, beds. Food and weapons. A life. This world is dangerous, Minerva, it confuses you. And the people in it, lie. Even those who you feel deserve your unwavering trust in them. But I haven't lied to you, have I? I haven't betrayed you. I've always told you the truth, even when you don't want to hear it."_

_"__I... I can't-" There were too many words. Too many thoughts… Too many voices and faces in her head. Each one rolling and tumbling over the other in a frenzy. Each one telling her, asking her, to do ten different things at once. "I can't!"_

_"__You want to save them."_

_"__She's lying to you!"_

_"__I know you do."_

_"__Don't listen!"_

_"__But Sophie won't let you."_

_"__Please, just stop!"_

_"__Do it!"_

_"__Don't!"_

_"__Minerva!"_

_"__Minnie!?"_

**_Bang!_**

_Minnie felt like her breath had been punched out of her lungs and her hands ached and burned from the recoil. Chest heaving in rapid breaths her eyes fell down to the smoking gun in her hands... just her hands. Had Lilly's ever even held hers or had she simply imagined it? The teen tilted her chin to observe the woman beside her, her eyes wide and startled by the dark smirk painting her lips and a gleam of dangerous satisfaction in the woman's rusted orbs. Minnie cringed under the expression until she realized that Lilly's gaze wasn't aimed at her, instead, she completely ignored her and was transfixed by another._

_"__Mi… Minnie?"_

_The voice, weak and thick, turned Minnie's heart to lead. Sends it burning and freezing and leaping both into her throat and plummeting through the ground at once. Time slowed around her, thickening the air to sludge. Fighting her every movement as she forces herself to follow the gaze of her commander and face the terrible broken voice of her sister._

_Sophie's face was so pale. Her ocean eyes blown so wide that her pupils constricted to pinpricks despite the darkness of the night, and the whites ringed her irises. Her palms pressed over her left breast. She had no doubt that her sister's heart was trying to hammer through her chest as Minnie felt relief bubble in her own. She saw no wound through her sister's skull... She'd missed. She had to have. Either that or Lilly had slipped every round from the magazine without her notice and this whole thing had just been some cruel trick._

_A hysterical, hiccuping laugh burst over Minnie's lips and the tears that had been blurring her vision and burning her nose began to fall. It was a test. That was all. Lilly was testing her loyalty and Sophie's nerve. That had to be it._

_"__Soph, you're ok. We're both going... to…"_

_Crimson bubbled up over Sophie's lips and dribbled down her chin, bright red and frothing. From between her fingers at her chest more red welled, pushing through organ and flesh and blooming like a macabre rose._

_Sophie's lips part, moving to form words and only succeeding to free more the pink frothed blood that filled her lungs and flooded her throat. And then she crumpled. Sophie's knees simply giving out from beneath her and her body folding up, dropping the dying girl into the mud. A fine, pinkish-red foam froths at the corner of her mouth, misting into the air and as she whimpers and a sickening crunch reverberates through the darkness. Bouncing around inside Minnie's skull, ricocheting off of bone and brain, more loudly than even the gunshot had been, her sister's arm snapping like a dry brittle twig as her body simply fell._

_"__Sophie?" Minnie is on her knees before she can think, mud and blood balling together in little globules and seeping through her jeans. Shaking fingers stroke her twins cheek and come away chilled and damp before they push through long ribbons of sunset flame. "I'm so sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I love you." She can't breathe right and she feels sick. Her ribs expand and her lungs inflate but her body just feels so weak, like it's ready to give up and lay her down beside her sister. "I love you, Soph. Please, don't go. I'm sorry."_

_She clings possessively to her sister, her forehead pressed so firmly to the others that she can feel flecks of bloodied breath marking her flesh, warmth that cools rapidly and leaves her skin itching and tight. Can hear every gurgle and wheeze as ruined lungs labour and battle on, can hear every tacky and thick swallow that catches in her throat, until she feels a hand land heavily on her shoulder and fingers, more vicious talons than human extremities, dig and bruise into her collar._

_When Minnie turns, neck craning and ocean eyes snapped wide, she finds no comfort. The dirty brown orbs that pin her own are cold and merciless, the sharp, hooded features twist into an almost grotesque amalgamation of human and vulture as Lilly's cruel lips part and she sneers. "You're mine now, Minerva. Mine by your own hand." Her artic gaze shifts to Sophie's, noting the tiny flicker of movement, the tiny crease between her brows. The brave teen's final act of defiance before the life faded from seafoam irises. The women smirked, her palm sliding along the remaining twin's chin, fingers curling painfully around her jaw as her face is forcibly jerked to stare at the dead girl in the mud. "How could they trust you? How could they trust a girl who killed her own sister to save her own wretched and miserable hide? How could they trust the selfish little bitch that you are."_

_The muscles in Minnie's jaw scream beneath the painful grip and her chin trembled with grief. Despair fills her throat even as her trapped voice threatens to choke her. "Bu- but, you made me… I don't… I didn't-"_

_"__Oh, but you did." Lilly purred. "My finger was not on yours when you pulled the trigger. And I saw that glorious little bloodthirsty gleam in your eyes." Lilly squeezes the teens jaw until she yelps and whimpers and squirms in her grasp, her mouth turning up in cruel delight as she watches the girl struggle. "This, all of this, was all your doing, Minerva. You're a soldier. A cold-blooded killer. And that's why you'll survive while your sister did not."_

Minerva's eyes snap wide, her body hurling her from the gentle arms that held her, with Lilly's spite laced taunts still ringing in her ears. When the fingers curl firm around her biceps, restraining her desperate movements, her fight or flight instincts took control and she lashed out. Fighting and struggling blindly, only stilling once she is free and pivoting around in a defensive squat with her eyes darting, seeking the enemies that she is convinced to be concealed within the shadows.

"Fucking hell, Minnie?" She knows that voice. She knows she does. She just needs a moment to match it to a face. Her brow creases as she shuffles through her muddled thoughts, separating her memories and shifting from her horrifying unconscious dreams and into harsh reality. Her sight fell to the owner of the voice. Violet..? Violet! The blonde's tongue flicks over her familiar lips and prods at the oozing slit that splits the corner of her mouth. Her storming, river-water eyes, wide with shock and hurt, fix on the redhead and her posture radiates the wariness of a beaten dog. "What the actual fuck is wrong with you?"

She'd hurt her. Violet was bleeding because of her. But none of that mattered now. All that mattered is what her Delta training dictates. Get up! Get moving! Neutralize the enemy and protect your own! But who exactly was her own? She blinks hard and shakes her head, trying to settle her tumultuous thoughts before one face floats to the forefront of her mind and sets her blood seething. The redhead whirls around on the smaller blonde, cold eyes blazing as she all but snarls at the girl. "Where is she? Where's Clementine?!"

Violet flinches beneath the tone, but her eyes harden and she sets her jaw firm in defiance. "I dunno. Lilly took AJ, so she went after her- Minnie!" The girl lunges and grabs Minerva's sleeve, fingers twisting into a tightly balled fist. The redhead's lips pull back into a feral grimace, teeth bared and eyes slit, but still Violet clings to her. "You can't!"

They are locked there, faces furious and frightened, but still mostly unreadable. In that frozen second, teetering between attack and retreat, they simply scowl and glare at each other until Minerva's temper flares and snaps.

"Stop fucking protecting her!" She wrenches her arm out of Violet's grasp and snatches up her discarded crossbow. Her cold eyes move slowly from the vacant space where a bolt had previously been loaded to the shaft and over to the corpse of her fallen comrade, zeroing in on the deadly dart protruding from the back of her skull, slicked in brain and gore. With calm and calculated motions, Minerva moves, careful not to slip in her former companion's blood, the edges already congealing and puddling around her feet as she places a boot to the dead woman's head and wrenches her bolt free. She takes a moment to clear her mind, methodically wiping the off the bolt upon Dorian's clothing and loading it back to her bow, before whirling around and bearing down on the blonde once more. "Don't you dare defend her! Not after everything that psychotic little bitch has done! She didn't protect you! She let her take you. Every little thing that Lilly has put you through is on your precious fucking Clementine!"

"I'm not defending her!" Violet's voice cracks painfully on her protests, the lie almost jamming her throat closed around her next words. "But Clem said they'd planted a bomb, Minnie! A fucking bomb! Do you get that?!"

"A bomb?" The scar split brow raises skeptically and lips twist in scorn. "Mitch is dead, who else could-"

"Willy could."

Willy? Minerva's mind explodes with crazed shifts of chaos and possibilities. She had seen him in the forest with Clementine and her pathetic scouting team and he still looked like that same weird little kid that followed Mitch around like a lost puppy. That same kid who idolized him, always watching with those unsettling bugged out eyes of his and mimicking whatever it was that Mitch was doing. Of course the little fucking creep would want to try his hand at Mitch's craft. But how successful could that boy be? He wasn't Mitch. Wasn't as practiced and wasn't as smart. The bomb planted is likely a dud, the half-assed experiment concocted by an immature little kid and reckless teen that was doomed to fail. But still, Minerva's thoughts twisted and turned inside her head. Corrupt whispers of doubt suffocating her rationality and intending to drive her insane as it turned her logic into fear.

There was a stillness in both girls, a silent tempest of warring emotions shadowing their expressions and clouding their eyes. Then suddenly there is movement as Minerva whirls around and bolts, leaving Violet stunned and frozen for a few moments before her thoughts kickstart once again and she scrambles to her feet. Tearing after the redhead already running full tilt and disappearing into the depths of the hull.

Minerva's breath came in sharp, short bursts. Hot and riddled with anxiety. Already her lungs burned and a sharp, stabbing stitch seized her side. A cold sweat had sprung to her brow and trickled uncomfortably down her neck as she ducked and wove around the cluttered corridors. Her eyes falling upon the occasional body of a fallen comrade, crumpled and bleeding and sprawled across her path but she couldn't stop. Behind her, she can hear Violet's own ragged breathing, can hear her footfalls echoing off the narrow walkways, ringing louder and carrying her closer as she races hot on the redhead's heels.

"Minnie!" The smaller teen threw herself forward with even greater abandon, her footfalls stumbling as she clips the shoulder of a fallen raider with her trailing boot. Her lungs and heart were pumping furiously, but the air she breathed in just didn't seem to be enough as she sprinted after the older teen, panic trembling through her exhausted limbs. "What are you doing? We have to go!"

"You go!" Minerva hissed, not bothering to look back, just pushing forward. "Go back to the school with the others. You take Tenn, pack up your shit and get the hell outta Dodge! Lilly knows where you are now. She knows where the school is, and she will come back. And the next time she does, she won't be recruiting-" This time, Minerva did look back. This time, Minerva stopped and turned around and faced down her former girlfriend, her glacial eyes glittering like shards of ice, empty and hard, as the small blonde stumbled to a halt, her blood-chilling with Minerva's ominous words. "-the next time she comes, it'll be a massacre."

It feels as though Violet's blood has thickened to sludge in her veins, her heart pumping wildly and still, she feels light-headed, her adrenaline surging so fast that she feels as though she might vomit. The warm sweat beading on her brow and trickling down her temple turns to crystal ice, chilling her heated skin uncomfortably, it's like she's woken from a dream turned nightmare only to find that reality is so, so much worse. "What?" She croaked, her tongue struggling to force the thickened saliva at the back of her throat down. "How would you-"

"We've done it before."

_'__We've?'_ Violet's knees tremble, it feels as if all the strength in her bones have left her and her muscles are withered. Bracing herself against the corridor wall with her shoulder, she simply stares at Minerva, at the girl she once loved, and for the first time, she doesn't recognize the person glaring back at her. "What are you saying? Minnie, I don't-"

"I'm not Minnie! I'm Minerva! Minerva! Minerva! MINERVA!" The redhead seethed. Her face twisting up into a bestial snarl and her balled fist slamming violently against the steel, punctuating each reiteration of her name. Every strike thundered through Violet's skull so painfully that even her teeth ached. The violence in Minerva's words frightened her and the blonde shrank back, whimpering with her palms clapped firmly over her ears as the final illusion shattered around her. "I am Minerva. I am a soldier for the Delta. Lilly is my commander."

The next words Minerva spoke, and the tone that she used to give them substance, confused Violet's brain. Soft and soothing, almost in a maternal way. "You and yours aren't the first group to fight back."

Minerva's abrupt shift from rage to placidity was unsettling. A calm and calculated switch as she, once again, shut herself off emotionally. Effectively stonewalling Violet out, disconnecting with almost no evidence of the rage that she had launched at the smaller teen, save for the thickened atmosphere that slid and oozed over her skin and set her instincts of self-preservation aflutter. It almost felt as though there was an internal clock ticking down inside Minerva, counting the moments until next explosive outburst, though no one could see the timer.

"We killed them. While they were sleeping." She fairly crooned, eyes of frigid aquamarine glazing over in that strange vacant, far-away expression. The same expression she had worn when she had talked of killing Sophie, it was like she was physically there but mentally absent. "I followed my orders, like a good soldier, and cut the children open, from belly to throat, while they slept."

Violet's hands trembled and her eyes watered, and sour bile filed her throat. Minerva's words are gasoline poured over the tiny spark of fear that had been smoking in her belly ever since she had followed the taller girl down here. Her body burns hot but her blood runs cold, and the sweat that trickles down her spine feels like stroking fingers of agony. "Minnie…"

It was like a switched had been flipped in the redhead's brain. Hatred contorts her features and pulls her lips, tight and thin, away from her teeth. A nightmarish creature wearing Minerva's face as a mask. "I am _not_ Minnie! I haven't been 'Minnie' since I killed Sophie… maybe even before then." Her lips twist again, caught partway between a smirk and a sneer. Baring down on Violet, Minerva sucks her tongue against her teeth as she purrs. "Maybe I've not been Minnie since Marlon handed us over and _you_ gave up on me. Or maybe, I never was Minnie and you were in love with an illusion."

"No-"

"Lilly told me… She told me that I would be the one to kill you, Vi-Vi. If you kept resisting and fighting back." Minerva's boot slid forward noiselessly. Just one step. Testing Violet's nerve. Would she run? Flee. She kinda hoped she would. With the way that slight little blonde's rawboned frame tensed, she looked like she might and chasing her down before stranging the life out of those pretty gemstone eyes sounded kinda fun. "And then you followed me down here. Alone… That wasn't very smart. But then, you never were when it came to people you cared about. Your blind loyalty will get you killed one day-"

Then there was a sound that froze them, two deer caught in headlights, and the floor beneath the two girls lurched. The enormous explosion echoed through the narrow hallways and roared up into the heavens as a fist of orange flame and black smoke punched its way through the ship. Forcing its way through the chimney, funnelled through the pipes and rushing free from the smokestack. Minerva dropped to her knees as soon as the first screaming note of steel warping and rending reached her ears, her fingers laced together over the back of her head in a feeble attempt at protecting herself. She was intimately aware of the devastating damage shrapnel could cause and knew that her fingers would barely slow a projectile intent on ripping through her flesh, but still, she curled down low, laying on the ground in the fetal position, trying to protect her ears and organs…

… Leaving Violet still standing and vulnerable as a piece of twisted metal pipe erupted from the wall and cut through the air, as keenly as any blade, a deadly missile careening toward her. Fast-moving and impossible to dodge.

The searing pain that takes over Violet's brain is a flash fire of heat and agony that takes her to her knees. It's a pain that radiates from beneath her skin and through her blood, swallowing her up as though consumed by acid, intent to destroy her from the inside out. Violet could feel the soft skin of her face as it split under the strike and peeled back, retreating from the heat like plastic recoiling and wrinkling into thick melted folds. She can feel that thin layer of connective tissue between her skin and muscle blister and bubble and smell her own flesh and fat cooking as if some invisible flame were still held flush against her skin. The agonized waves that rolled and crashed through her synapses increased with every thump and pulse, the small, brief lulls between bringing to her a false hope of an end. Each peak robbed the breath from her lungs and, in turn, robbed her the ability to speak, to scream. It only lasted for a couple of seconds, half a minute tops, but in those seconds time around her seemed to slow to a crawl, each moment extending to an agonizing lifetime.

And then it stops and Violet simply folded up and crumpled to the floor, her breaths coming rapid and shallow. The smoke filling the gloom chokes her, blinds her, she can no longer see when Minerva had been huddled. Her chest rises and falls, lungs inflating and deflating in quick little bursts, but her ribs are like steel traps that prevent her from taking full breaths of dirtied air. Her throat burns and aches, inhaling heat and flames that scorch along her esophagus. Then she hears a rhythmic thundering that rolled along the floor and through her cheek, her defocusing eyes catching a glimpse of a blur moving past her. A streak of blood-red racing down the hallway and curling away into cold infinite darkness.

A second explosion, more violent than the first, rocks the ship and belches a firey ball of yellow flame and thick, cloying acrid smoke into the hallway. Igniting the stacked piles of cargo and melting strands of once pale, buttery blonde to already ruined flesh.

All Violet could do was writhe feebly, alone and abandoned on the bare boarded floor as she burned, the occasional gurgling whimper escaping her throat to echo piteously off the walls. Every thought in her mind had become confused, a jumbled and painful mess, as the burning pain licked deeper. Bubbling to her nerve endings and lighting her up with agony that quickly became a brief flash fire that left her unable to do much else but wish for any raider still alive to find her... at this point, a bullet to the head would be a mercy.

A mercy she wanted. A mercy she would happily beg for.

Instead, she is granted no mercy, and the ship lurches a final time. The steel of the hull wailing as a third blast hit and splits the body asunder. The groans and whines of buckling steel competing with the roar of the rushing river, as well as the howls and chorus of the dead. And Violet finds herself hurled through the fissure, a broken rag doll tossed aside without a care, her burned body striking frigid waters so brutally that it robbed her of her breath as swiftly as it did her consciousness.

And all she could do is wait for the cold, grappling hands of the dead to take her and finally end it all.


	4. Love is a flower friendship a tree

Chapter.4: Love is a flower; friendship a sheltering tree.

Darkness is a confusing substance, but now that she has grown increasingly familiar with it, it no longer frightens her so much. At first, it had been cruel to her. Brutal. Crushing her and keeping her a prisoner tethered in its void. Now it touches her more gently, cradles her as a mother does her infant. It presses kisses upon her skin and offers her peaceful comfort in its embrace. This darkness is forgiving. Safe. The terrors in it mere echoes and spectres, imagined or remembered, and they can't touch or hurt her anymore.

It's the waking world that she knows she should be wary of.

The waking world where everything is a threat or a trial. Where it takes what it wants from her, confuses her senses and turns them on her as weapons to harm her. Even now it's trying to tear her from the darkness's grasp and the serenity it wraps her in. It's winding its poisonous whispers, snippets from beyond her closed eyelids into her brain. Dancing imps that taunt her, armed with threatening hisses of what is to come, the cruelties that lie waiting to ambush her, these threats intertwine with the cherubic murmurs that soothe her hurts and soften her memories.

_The lips that touched hers were dry and chapped, soft and shy. The kiss shared as delicate as the brush of a butterfly wing. _

"Louis! Get the gates closed!"

_"Why would I go anywhere else, if you're here?" _

_"Lilly knows where you are now. She knows where the school is, and she will come back. And the next time she does, she won't be recruiting-" _

"Aasim! Willy! Gitcher asses up on the wall and keep them walkers offa him!"

_"Violet, talk to me..." _

_"-the next time she comes, it'll be a massacre." _

_"We're here to take you home." _

Somewhere to her left, a dog is barking. Snarling. And she can hear a gurgling howl, loud and close by, cut short by a wet crunching sound. The sound of Rosie's massive jaws crushing through decaying bone and brain.

_"Fine. Stay here then. But I'm bringing everyone else home." _

When Violet wakes fully it's all at once and panicked, as though it's an emergency. Her heart is beating in her throat, fast and hard, and there's an alarm that buzzes frantically in her brain. It's as if, over these last few days, sleeping had become a dangerous thing for her to do. And, in a sense, it's true. Every time she's woken there's some new shit storm or another already playing out without her. The raid. The boat. The explosion. Clementine. Lilly. Minnie… and whatever the hell this is that's happening around her now.

She blinks. Closes her eyes and blinks again. Confused when the darkness doesn't lift and the blurring shapes rippling through the new light of low flames refuse to sharpen. Forgetting for a fraction of a second that the blast from Willy's inaugural explosive has injured her face, fucked with her eyes and that her sight is so far gone that all that she can detect now are the shifting shadows of light and dark. In the minutes that follow the rush of whatever the hell was happening without her passes and the voices of the others draw nearer, she feels the cavernous grief all over again -the loss of things she had never once even considered missing aching in her chest.

"I'm gonna need a minute to... t'get the room prepped for her. Y'all can bring her in, soon as she wakes up."

She can feel the sorrow in the voice -in _Ruby's _voice. It's like a cold sweat that beads up on her skin, colder than even the river water still soaked into her layers of shirts and jackets. Fat and cold, liquid worms that slither and slide uncomfortably over her flesh and she _hates _it. Hates the vulnerability she feels as her ears strain to follow any sound of approaching feet or the laboured rattle of lungs breathing that would give away their positions to her.

She wants, more than anything, to be able to see their faces again. Wants to be able to read their expressions instead of trying to decipher their intentions only through the tone of their voices.

"Yeah, alright. Thanks, Rubes." Louis's words are soft and quiet and she can imagine the way he might be watching her as she lays on her side, her back to them.

To Ruby, he must sound calm and put together, or at least enough so that the southern girl doesn't feel the need to linger longer. The loud crunch of pebbles grinding underfoot makes her intention to leave easy to interpret.

But to Violet, it was all too obvious that the boy is lying. Just another one of Louis's theatrical masks pulled into place.

As the buxom redhead strides away from him, vanishing into the admin building with her head bowed low and arms wrapped around herself in silent comfort to her own misery, Louis turns. Though he moves toward the wagon instead of away. Closer to the motionless blonde with his hands pushing through his dirtied dreads as he sighs.

"I know you're awake, Vi."

Violet flinches as the twisting misery in Louis's voice reaches her and her eyes slam shut. She had thought that she could have dealt with almost anything better than the realization of the loss of her vision until she heard that tone and his words, talking to her directly. So she simply lies there, still and silent, curled as though she's sleeping and hopes that he doesn't see through her act. Hopes that he doesn't say anything more to her.

But he does. Of course, he does. He _always _does. Why should he stop now?

"It's alright, Vi. You're safe now."

He doesn't even sound like Louis anymore. Instead, he sounds so much more mature. Morose and sombre and not at all like her annoying friend who chooses to walk lost in a world of his childish daydreams and jokes instead of the grim, harshness of reality. He _chooses _to, the same way that he is choosing to sound weary and broken now.

"We got you out. You're back at the school."

But _she _doesn't get that choice. She never has and now she never will.

"Vi?"

And she's startled to discover that a tiny part of her almost hates him for the fact that he does. "What do you want?"

For a moment he's silent. Taken aback by the harshness in her tone. She can hear him swallow and, in her mind's eye, she can picture how his adam's apple bobs with the action.

"I'm gonna take you inside in a few minutes, okay? To Ruby. She'll be waiting for you." He reaches his hand out and pauses, unsure if he should actually touch the injured girl or not. Then he sighs softly and gingerly places his hand on her shoulder. Giving her a moment to shake him off, and when she doesn't, he gently curls his fingers around her bony limb in a show of comfort. "She wants to help you, you know?"

It's only then that Violet shakes Louis's hand off of her shoulder. "Why?"

She draws her knees in tight, close to her belly and curls her fingers into the worn-out fabric that scratches over her skin. Her bitten back nails rasping at the denim. "It's not like she can do anything to fix this." Her lips tremble but her voice is hardened if quiet. "It's not something that expired antibiotics can help with or something that she can just stitch fucking shut."

She's so desperate to shut him out and isolate herself. So much so that she mentally puts herself back _there. _In that dark, dank cell, alone and onboard Lilly's boat where nobody else can reach her. She puts herself back behind the bars, broken and scared and crying out for rescue… And she puts herself in Lilly's place, her own features twisting and wearing Lilly's sneers as she taunts her caged self's pitiful wails with Lilly's voice breathing life into her own thoughts and fears.

_Look at you. You're so pathetic. Broken. Lost. And so fucking useless it's humiliating… They don't care for you, they pity you. Like a dog that's so feeble all it can do is shit and piss on itself. _

"Come on, Vi. Don't be like that." The lanky teen reaches out for the blonde's shoulder again. Hurt but unsurprised when the girl immediately rolls it away from his touch the instant that she feels his fingers skim against her clothing. "It'll be okay, you'll see-"

"No, Louis. I won't _'see'! _That's the whole fucking point!" Faded eyes narrow sharply as Violet shifts herself onto her hip. She aims her fogged over scowl toward Louis's hazy shape. Squinting and smothering her dismay beneath her temper when she realizes that even now can barely make him out, backlit only by the small flickering campfire in the middle of the courtyard. "So why don't you just take your dumbass self away and leave me the fuck alone!"

Again there's silence and, for a few moments, Violet allows herself to believe that the boy has taken heed of her sharp words and wandered away. But even without the lack of scuffing footsteps marking his retreat, she knows better.

Knows Louis better.

So she's -annoyingly- unsurprised that in the next second she can both hear and feel him moving, rocking the cart as he clambers into the back of it with her. Curls tighter around herself when she hears his groans of effort and the carts squeaks of protests, squeezes her eyes shut when she hears the breath that wuffs over his lips as he thumps down on his ass behind her.

Violet sighs and hugs her knees tighter still. "I told you to fuc-"

Louis's voice is quiet as it drifts over to her on the cold night air, soft and steady. "I know what you told me, Vi."

He's never been one to cow under the blonde's temper. One of the only people who has ever really bothered to take the time to get to know her and learn that she is more bark than bite. And he is the only one still here who knows when she is scared instead of angry, can tell when she needs someone there for her even though she refuses to ask for help and tries to push him away when he answers the unspoken call.

Just like she was now.

"And you know that you can take this lone-wolf act of yours and shove it up your ass. I know that you're hurting and that you're scared."

He's ready for the snarling deflection that she hurls his way.

"You don't know shit!"

And he's ready to counter it.

"I know more than you might think," Louis says quietly, almost mumbling. Then he pauses and takes a long and slow breath, like what he's about to say next is painful for himself to admit. "I know that Clementine likes you. Like a lot. And I know that you like her, too."

Violet stiffens and her chest constricts. His words are bands of iron around her ribs, squeezing against her lungs, tightening with each breath.

"Wrong." She whispers. "On both counts-"

Of all the responses that Violet could imagine Louis might have to her words, laughter was the furthest reaction from her mind. It is soft and gentle. Humourless. But it's that same honest rumbling sound that comes from his belly whenever he finds something, anything, truly funny.

"You know that you can't lie to me, Vi. You never have. You just think you can." There's also a little hint of something else in it too, something hollow and almost defeated lurking in its depths that catches her ear and twists her guts and Violet doesn't really understand why. "You think that you're some hotshot liar because your poker face could throw Ms Bailey off your ass whenever you got pulled in for her lame-ass psyche evaluations and behavioural assessments. You could bullshit her, but you can't bullshit a bullshitter."

Again she wishes that she could see it. The little shifts in Louis's expressions. She wishes she could have seen how the slow curve of his smile grew and the gentle warmth of satisfaction as it slides into his eyes when he catches her off-guard. She even wishes that she could see the expression his features sit in now, even if it might hurt her to actually see the disappointment that she images there.

At least then she would _know _instead of just guessing. And that would be better, right?

But she can't. And her frustration and the little pity party that she's throwing herself gets the better of her and she simply shrugs the one shoulder that she isn't laying on as she grunts out a dismissive. "Whatever."

With that conversation reaching a dead end, they both fall silent. Just sitting or laying in place and ignoring each other until Louis sighs.

"I'm sorry, Violet." He glances at the back of the girls head, eyes the singed and blackened ends of her hair. The once a pretty pale gold colour now dirtied with sweat and grime with the ends curling up, melted together under the heat of the explosion that she had been caught in. "I'm sorry that you went through whatever it was that you went through back there-"

Minerva's voice is still there, echoing in her ears. She can still see that frightening and cold killing light flaring in the redhead's ocean irises, telling her that her Minnie was gone and was never coming back.

_"Lilly told me… She told me that I would be the one to kill you, Vi-Vi. If you kept resisting and fighting back. And then you followed me down here. Alone… That wasn't very smart. But then, you never were when it came to people you cared about. Your blind loyalty will get you killed one day..." _

Violet's hands slide from her knees to her arms. Her fingers tighten around her biceps and pinch into the thin skin and tense muscles in an attempt to ground herself in the here and now and not the there and then as she screws her eyes shut and whispers. "Louis, don't!"

But Louis either doesn't hear her quiet plea or else he ignores it because he continues anyway. "I'm sorry that you got hurt-"

_All she could do was writhe feebly, alone and abandoned on the bare boarded floor as she burned, the occasional gurgling whimper escaping her throat to echo piteously off the walls. _

A sound, dangerously close to a sob, catches in her throat. She doesn't want this. She doesn't want to remember. She doesn't want to feel helpless or how her emotions turn jagged and sharp and tear up her insides or how they slide their poisoned edges into her psyche.

"Seriously, Lou. Stop!"

"And I'm sorry that when you needed me, I couldn't save you."

_Honeyed eyes, that blaze gold in the firelight, meet terrified green from behind a drawn bow and enemy body. Clementine sees her, reads her desperate plea for help, and then she turns away and takes another into her sights. Loosing her bolt for him and not her. _

Something inside her snaps and Violet slams her hands down against the bottom of the cart, sending needles of pain racing through her wrists and startling Louis into silence as propels herself upright with her teeth bared and her face burning anew -blistered and peeling skin shifting into a scowl.

It wasn't him that she wanted, it was _never _him and she refuses to let herself feel sorry for him.

"I didn't need you! I needed _her! _But she picked you! Clementine saved you! Don't you get that?" She squints, trying to force Louis's smudged out face into focus, only to grow more furious at herself when her efforts fail. "After all the shit with Marlon… After you and the others voted against her and AJ and kicked them out… After she kissed me and told me that she wanted me... After every-fucking-thing else that happened next, the one time that it mattered and I needed her most, she still chose _you! _So you don't get to be fucking sorry!"

For a moment, Louis maintains his silence. Simply watching the anger that simmers in the blonde's burned-out eyes and seeing little more than that same scared eleven-year-old girl that he'd first met almost a decade ago. That quiet little thing who had slipped silently from the passenger's side of some shit heap truck. Her busted up duffel at her feet as she had stared blankly after the same pick-up as it rolled straight back out of the gates without so much as a single wave for a send-off. He sees the same scrawny little girl, clinging to the same cruel lessons that she'd been taught -be suspicious, fight and reject anyone who tries to offer her kindness- so broken and starved of the love that she clearly needed and craved.

He had hoped that when Clementine had crashed into their lives and he had seen their initially rocky friendship blossom with the first seeds of romance prising open the blonde's fortresses, Violet might find some of those things that she so desperately needed in the brunette. That she could help his fragile friend, wrapped in the guise of a warrior, finally heal and find herself again.

Instead, she seems further out of reach than ever...

"Then tell me, who does, Violet? Who gets to be sorry?" He wants to help her. He wants what's best for her. He always has. But for years, the best that he has been able to offer her is a void to scream into and a dummy for her to shadow box against until she tired herself out and her tantrums blew over. "Because, from what I heard when you and Clem were fighting in that cell, it doesn't seem like she gets to be sorry either."

"She doesn't."

… and she's still falling. Behaving like a cat that, returning to her feral ways. Avoiding talking about whatever she doesn't want to talk about and brushing off the comfort he tries to offer her.

It shows him that over the years nothing has changed and that maybe his soft approach has been more a bandage rather than the sutures that she needed. "You can't do that, Vi! Not to her, that's not fucking fair."

"Life's not fucking fair, Louis!" There's something strange that catches in Violet's throat as she shouts. A whimpering note that hitches her breathing. It's lonely and desperate, like the cries of a cornered stray scared for her life, snapping and snarling randomly at anyone who comes too close. "It's hard and miserable and no one gives two shits about you as soon as they're given a chance to get rid of you!"

And Louis realizes it now that he can't just stand aside and watch her fight and drown anymore with the hopes that someone else would save her.

Violet has been drowning all her life, unable to let go of the persona that she'd been forced to carve herself into. To fit in a world that was indifferent to her and didn't care for the struggles that she's had to endure, nor care that she has had to hack and mangle herself into a survivor long before the dead had ever started walking. He's finally seeing that her scars aren't scars while they're still bleeding.

And it's excruciatingly clear to him now that Violet has been quietly picking at the still healing scabs of her emotional trauma for years and he hadn't even noticed… Until now. Until whatever the hell Lilly and Minerva had put her through on that boat had torn those scabs clean off and cut those wounds deeper. And he doesn't feel as though he can let her fight herself anymore or hide from what's really going on inside her head, not if he is to ever have his friend back.

He just hopes that he's not too late.

"If that's what you think, then why was going after you all that Clementine could think about? All any of us could think about."

"Because it wasn't about me! Omar and Aasim-"

"Bullshit!"

Louis is angry and Violet knows it. She can hear it in the way that he's forcing himself to keep his voice so calm and level. It's in the strained articulation of his words and in the way that his breaths are strangely audible.

"If you would just stop over complicating things and twisting what people say and do, so it fits _your _fucked up view of the world, for just a second and actually give them a chance-" Then he sighs, his anger deflating and his voice returns to its softer tones. "If you would stop focusing on dodging all of these imaginary traps and tricks that you think everyone is laying for you all the time and put your defences down, then maybe you'll realize that not everyone is trying to dick you over."

Violet freezes, her thoughts stalling, then starting… and then stalling again. Her fingers curl and flex against her arms, her cold indifference finally burning itself out and leaving her feeling empty and hollow.

And so, so lonely.

And then she feels Louis reaching out to her. Feels his hand gently covering hers. Feels his fingers carefully curling around her trembling knuckles and squeezing, just barely enough to let her know he was there… just like he had when she had begged him not to let go of her on the shore. And this time when he talks, his voice is warm and his tone gentle and she feels ready to listen to him.

"Of course we wanted Aasim and Omar back. But Clementine, she went after you. She fought for you, Vi. Clem led us through a horde of walkers, took down trained soldiers… she faced both Lilly and Minnie, the two people who scare her more than anyone else in this fucked up world; because she was so frightened of losing you."

The next thing that Violet feels is Louis's hand moving away from hers and the strange scratchy-soft sensation of his dreadlocks resting against her forehead for half a second before the warmth of his skin replaces it. And, as she realizes that Louis's arms are now around her shoulders; folding her into his chest and guiding her arms to hold him back, Violet feels her insides shatter. And this time, she doesn't resist it, doesn't fight it. Doesn't think she could even if she had wanted to.

Instead, Violet crumples. Her chin trembles, the dam breaks, and she's clinging to him in the back of a stolen caged wagon in front of everyone, hiding her sobs in her best friend's ratty old coat. And she doesn't care. She just wants him to hold her. Comfort her. Tell her that everything will be okay, even though she knows differently. Her fingers shake as they knot around the fabric at his back and she pushes herself so deep into his arms that she's damn near crawling into his lap.

And Louis lets her do just that. He doesn't say a word. No jokes. No teasing. No sappy, heartfelt serenades. He just holds her in gentle arms that still give her space to retreat if she chooses. He strokes her ruined hair and lets her cry and shake and push everything that she has accumulated these past few weeks out of her system until her body sags into his and her sobs turn to sniffles.

Then he pulls back, just enough to cup her cheeks and angle her face to his. He finds her blistered eyes and singed lashes and swallows hard as he watches the last teardrop roll to the corner of her mouth. He wishes that he could just thumb away the last of the tears from her skin, but it's so raw and he's so afraid of hurting her. So, he gently sweeps away the tear tracks that cut through the soot and grime on her cheeks instead.

"Can I take you inside now?" He asks quietly. His voice unsteady, his own tears threatening to spill. "We really need to let Ruby get you fixed up as best she can, okay?"

Violet sniffles the last few times. Each wet, awkward sound broken apart by the short pauses of her shaking recovery breaths. And then, with her final sniffle, she coughs out a meek little "Yeah."

Then his comforting weight is gone and she feels the bottom of cart slowly sway and dip beneath her. Rocking gently as Louis shuffles his way off the edge. And when she feels him take her hands into his, reassuring her that she was safe, she's quick to clutch him back. Letting the warmth and softness of his fingers find hers and guide her to safety.

Her knees shake a little as her boots thump down and her hand in his tightens instinctively when she feels the tiniest of tugs coaxing her forward.

"It's alright, Vi." His voice is gentle and the hand that places itself to her back is firm. The warmth of his palm between her shoulder blades seeps comfort into her tense frame as he slowly guides her feet over the broken paving slabs and uneven pebbles. "I'm here. I've got you."

Violet nods her head once in silence and, even though her brows furrow in concentration and her teeth are clenched tight with determination, she doesn't stop her free hand from crossing over her chest to clutch the familiar fabric of Louis's coat. The sherpa lining under her fingers as soft as it is foul-smelling.

"I'm gonna get you up there," Louis tells her. "Then Ruby can get you all cleaned up. And then I'm gonna go find Clem and the boys-" He squeezes his fingers tightly around hers as her fingers tighten and squeeze right back around his. "-and when _we _get back, you're gonna have a damned good apology waiting for her, alright?"

The corner of Violet's mouth twitches and the tight concentration set on her face as she slowly climbs the steps slackens for just a moment as she mumbles quietly. "Okay, Lou."

* * *

Time marches ever forwards as days slide into weeks and the weeks stretch into months. The last of the season's warmth fading with each new dawn that arrives. The trees that she remembers seeing last dressed in the fiery scarlets and caramel hazes of early fall now shiver as the last of their leaves- the last of their burning reds and golden yellows- finally fall. Pirouetting prettily through the air to lie upon the earth and turn to crisp, brittle skeletons amongst the gnarled and knotted roots.

After that night, after Ruby had done all that her limited abilities permitted to save as much of Violet's vision as she could, the blonde had chosen to remain inside the dorm wing; inside her room, as she slowly teaches herself to live through her other senses.

At least, that's what she tries to convince herself to believe over the myriad of other, more self-deprecative reasons vying for her attention.

She drags her palms over the bunched up sheets beneath her ass. Allows her hands to explore the folds and creases of the rumpled bedding. Lets her fingers follow the pilling that speckles the worn-out fabric as her skin moves lightly over the strange little bumps that gather there. Through the cracks that spiderweb the window drifts the bright chorus of birdsong, their boldness of voice and dancing melodies lift Violet's spirits a little as a small curve tilts the corners of her mouth.

She breathes in deeply, relishing in the sweetness of the morning's brisk air. She can taste the first chill of winter intertwined with the last of the autumn's warmth, as well as the musky tang of staleness that wafts from the small squares of ratty carpet carefully arranged around her room.

The carpet scraps were Willy's idea. One of his better ones and one that Violet's toes have come to appreciate.

Each small mat of woven nylon fibres lays before an obstacle; the room door, the desk, her bed, each precisely arranged so that Violet's bared feet would find the coarse edges of the carpet before her toes found the heavy furniture. This way she was able to navigate her room without relying on another person to guide her, and this way she is able to retain a fraction of her independence and the few remaining tattered strands of her dignity.

A sudden, sharp and shrill whistle pierces the quiet, drawing her attention to the voices of the others outside rising and falling as they carry out wordless conversations inconsequential to her. Inconsequential maybe, but the longing that she feels to join in still aches in her chest. Still carries with it the warning nip of tears that gather in her damaged eyes hidden beneath the layers of itchy bandages.

Her palms idly circle over her blanket again. Her bitten back nails catch upon a particularly large pill bobble pulling up on the coarse blanket and the blonde focuses on picking at it listlessly as she listens to the squealing of metal, the heavy gates being pulled open. And as the high pealing sound rents through the quiet, her negative thoughts slowly begin to roll up over her. Shattering into tiny pieces any positivity that she has felt in herself for her progress against the jagged shore of reality.

But still, she clutches desperately at her tiny triumphs. Every single baby step forwards and defends them jealously. It's all she has left anymore anyway. Those and the tiny pathetic fragments of who she once was.

She's doing better, she _is _, but sometimes, when she can't sleep at night, Violet finds herself wishing that she had died in that explosion. Better to be dead and decaying entirely rather than slowly rotting from the inside out.

She can't fight, she can't run, hell, she can't even fetch her own meals without someone holding onto her so that she doesn't trip and fall. It's humiliating and infuriating and...

She sniffles hard. She just wants things to go back to how they were before. Before Lilly and the Delta. Before she lost her sight…

_Maybe, even before Clementine? _

She pauses at that thought. Her guts curling themselves up into tight and painful knots that shove themselves into her ribs as guilt seizes her heart.

_No. She doesn't mean that. _

"Knock, knock."

The blondes long fingers stop their idle roaming and curl into hooks instead. Her shoulders instinctively tense and crawl up to her ears as she sinks her teeth into her lower lip, her quiet brooding broken and replaced by irritation for missing her visitor's approach.

"Violet?"

Maybe it's selfish of her -it's certainly contradictory at the very least to the lonesome pining that has been dominating her thoughts- but Violet doesn't particularly want company this morning. She especially doesn't want the company of who she already knows to be standing behind the closed door to her room.

It's the same person who is always there. Twice a day, every day; standing with a bowl of whatever slop Omar has managed to cobble together in his hands and with what she imagines to be that infuriatingly bright grin of his on his lips. Cheerfully content to waste his time as well as some of their limited resources that the still active members of the group struggle to scrounge up every day on her.

"Vi?"

It's the same person who'll then return to her at least twice more. Coming to check on her and share the news of the day's activities, as though she's still their assumed leader- tells her of the walker sightings in their safe zones, the rebuilding of their home and to talk of Clementine's recovery.

"Vi? You in there?" The voice is muffled through the heavy wooden barrier, but the tone is still nauseatingly jovial and bright.

His visits are how Violet had heard of Clementine's dire injury in the first place. Covered in sweat, a fresh layer of gore, with the sickeningly familiar scent of burned flesh clinging to his clothes and tears streaking down his face.

It's how she had learned of Tennessee's death...

"You decent? Pants and shirts on?"

… and Minerva's. Bitten, her face in shreds, half turned and spiralling into insanity.

Violet snorts, the bitterly wry sound resonating through the hollow cavity of her chest. "Yeah, I'm in here, asshole. Where else_ would _I be?"

She twists her hips and swings her legs around so that the bottoms of her feet are pressed flat atop the old, sagging mattress. Her bare toes wiggle against the scratchy blanket as she hears the door slowly creak open and Louis pokes his head around the edge.

"You didn't answer my question."

"Am I decent?" A beat of silence passes and Violet assume that Louis nods his reply. She shrugs and pulls her knees to her chest, holding them in place as she hides her face behind them. "I guess."

Slipping inside his friend's room, Louis is careful to close the door quietly behind him before taking equal care to let his steps strike the bared spaces on the floor loudly. It makes it easier for the blind blonde to track his movements and prepare herself accordingly for when he throws himself down onto her mattress.

Though she still fails to brace for when his landing almost bounces her onto the floor.

"You guess?" He reaches out his hand and grips her thigh to aide in her efforts to remain on the mattress. "That's not a real answer, Vi."

Again Violet settles for a simple shrug. And, for a long moment, the room is filled with nothing save for the slightly strained silence that encompasses the two teenagers and the quiet wordless sounds that ride the breeze to tell of the activities happening outside her window.

She might not be able to see him watching her, but she can feel his eyes on her. How they analyze every twitch of muscle and scrutinize her hunching posture until Violet's stubbornness crumbles and she sighs. "I'm alive. Whatever good that is."

"Being alive _is _good, Vi." The fingers wrapped around her thigh tighten in a gentle squeeze. A gesture of comfort and wordless request for her attention. "But you wanna know what would make it better?"

Despite the fact that Violet's eyes -from her scorched eyebrows down to the bridge of her nose- are entirely covered by the clean but ragged bandages, Louis can still see how they widen in interest. The shiny pinkness of the fresh, new scarring shifting beneath the bindings and he can't help but grin wider as she tilts her head toward him curiously.

He has the stage and her attention, and instinctively the bright and cheerful performer in him demands to be the centre of it all. But, rather than grand and sweeping, Louis's next words are gentle and soothing. Twirling on a soft ripple of breath rather than a loud booming declaration as he leans forward and stretches out to pluck at the bindings secured around Violet's eyes with his fingers. "Ruby reckons you should be healed enough for this thing to come off."

The breath in Violet's lungs catches in her throat, almost painfully so with its haste to escape her body. The steady rhythm of her heartbeat flutters as the muscle pumps harder, sending the blood dancing through her veins just a little bit quicker.

_They can be removed? She might be able to see again? _

Her pulse skips and twirls in an odd mix of excitement and apprehension that sharpens her senses. She can feel Louis's presence leaning in over her, his hands rising, reaching out. And she hears the little huff of surprise tumbling from his lips as she dodges his fingertips before they can even brush the edge of the knot.

"Not here." She gasps as she slides clumsily from the mattress. For a moment she sits on her knees, gathering her wits and mentally mapping her surroundings before she springs up again and finds the wall to orientate herself against as she finds and pushes her feet into her boots. "If these are coming off, then don't want the first thing that I see to be these miserable fucking walls and your idiotic grinning face."

Chuckling to himself, Louis follows Violet's lead. Pushing himself to his feet and padding around the bed until he has crossed the room, leaning his shoulder to the wall and watching Violet's struggle to wrestle her footwear into submission. Raising an amused eyebrow with every mutter under her breath that he catches as she stomps each foot deeper into its boot, knowing that mischief touches the curve of his mouth and twinkles merrily in his eyes.

"Oh?" A jaunty, teasing tone creeps into the youth's voice as he brings his arms up to fold loosely over his middle. "And to where would her Ladyship wish to lay her eyes upon first? Perhaps she wishes to re-christen her gaze with the lovely Clementine's charming-"

"I want to see Minnie."

That name slipping from his friend's lips has Louis wincing as his jaw tenses and his mouth snaps shut. Hearing that name uttered somehow manages to drag all of the comfortable camaraderie and good-natured banter that had softened the air out of it and, instead, turns it brittle and draws it in tight. The atmosphere turns thick and heady, charged as though a sudden thunderstorm looms upon the horizon, primed and ready to shatter the peaceful moment without warning or apology.

It's an unease that tightens Louis's intestines into knots and tugs his heart both ways as he watches Violet clumsily make her way toward him. Her palms flat and sliding along the wall's surface as she takes careful and hesitant steps toward his voice. "Vi," The boy says gently. His own voice sounds jarring and awkward to his ears and his words lodge in his throat, like shards of glass cutting into the back of his tongue as he swallows. "Vi, Minnie's dea-"

"I know that she's dead!" The girl snaps. Her voice is as sharp as the first warning crack of thunder before the deluge starts.

And, for a moment, everything stops. Louis simply stands there watching Violet's lips as they stretch thin over her bared teeth, gritting together in frustration. Watches as she pauses and her tight features soften. Her lips slip back over her clenched teeth and this time, when she reaches her hand out, she's searching for Louis's fingers rather than the wall. Pushing himself up from his slouch against the wall, Louis reaches back, his fingers curl around hers as he gently guides slim digits to his elbow where she grips on tight.

"I know that she's gone, for reals this time. But, Louis…" Her fingers clutch harder, pleading for him to understand. "I _have _to see her again."

"Vi…"

"I want to say goodbye."

Louis hesitates. His lips stall, already parted and ready to counter her argument with a suggestion of his own, struggling to manipulate his thoughts and his voice into something more appropriate than the knee-jerk denial that threatens to escape.

"And not just to her." This time when Violet pauses, it's to swallow down the uncomfortable lump of emotion jamming tight in her throat. Even then her next words fall from her lips broken and hitching. "But to Tenn, too."

So he says nothing. He simply guides Violet's steps until they stand in front of the door. Stays silent until her hollow little voice pushes out one single word that halts his fingers from wrapping around the doorknob.

"Please?" The request is so small and so quiet. Her voice more an echo, a shadow of a sound rather than one that could claim itself to be one of its own, but the significance behind it is profound. "Louis?"

This was Violet finally asking him for his help instead of telling him to go fuck himself. This was Violet, despite her discomfort and all of her uncertainties, peeking out from behind her walls and shields and trusting to him her vulnerabilities and insecurities.

And as much as he thinks this to be a bad idea, he finds that he doesn't have the heart to deny her.

The sigh that drifts from Louis's lips is a signal, not of irritation, but of his resolve leaving him. Softly deflating before filling him with melancholy instead of relief.

"Alright," He murmurs as he quietly eases the door from its frame and steers Violet through. "I'll take you there."

The pair walk in companionable quiet as they make the relatively short journey out of the dorm wing and into the outside world. Violet pauses suddenly, her fingers curling deeper into the coat shrouding Louis's arm as the first frosty breeze nips the tip of her nose and flows over her skin, stealing a quiet hum from her lips.

And Louis shares in her smiles, though his are for entirely different reasons.

Violet has kept herself shut away for so long now, with so few of them escaping the Delta raid unscathed and with Ruby's time almost entirely invested into Clementine's recovery, she had decided it would be easier if she kept her blind ass out of the way. But now, right now at least, they are safe and everything feels calmer than it has in over a year and Louis is happy to stand at her side, moving only when she chooses. Placid and patiently waiting, with her hand tucked tightly around his elbow, like a faithful retriever in full harness. He neither hurries her nor is he harried by her as she continues to indulge her senses as much as she wishes. Content to simply stand there with her, enjoying the brisk late fall breeze with her as he watches it tousle and flick around the dead tips of her hair like a child begging for her to come and play.

He does, however, find himself thankful that the others are outside the gates already. Too busy in resetting traps and collecting supplies for the evening meal to interfere or ask awkward questions. It makes the meandering pace that they travel feel less like a spectacle, and it takes away the bitter sting of embarrassment from every little snag that sends Violet stumbling as she struggles to navigate the broken paving slabs and clumps of weeds from memory.

"Alright, Vi," Louis's voice, low and warm and endlessly patient, catches Violet's attention and halts her travels. Ahead of them stand the crudely made markers and piles of earth, most blanketed with a shimmering layer of lichen save for one. The loam on that one still bare and dark, the mark of a grave recently dug. "We're gonna stop here for a sec, okay?"

"Are we there? Am I…" She's nervous. It's clear in the way that her rasping voice hitches and faulters in her throat and how her fingers clutch a little more desperately at Louis's sleeve. Her long, slim digits tighten when she feels him shift from her side, her free hand joining the first. "Do you think I'll be able to see them?"

For a moment, Louis is quiet, simply placing his hand over Violet's and squeezing gentle comfort into her knuckles. A few steps to her left is a little bench-seat, an old carpentry project one of the older and long-dead students had built in shop class a lifetime ago. It's just simple planks fixed together and it wobbles a little but is solidly built. At least, it's solid enough that Assim had to help him move it into the graveyard during the cleanup of the courtyard.

"Yeah, we're there Vi." He tells her gently, guiding her backwards until she feels the edge of the bench bump up against the back of her knees. Once she's seated, Louis lowers himself to sit on his knees and places his hands either side of the blonde's thighs and grips the bench. "And I hope so."

He's nervous too. He'd be lying if he claimed that he wasn't. His fingers shake as they move away from the weathered wood to, once again, brush against the tight knot holding the blindfold in place over Violet's eyes. He wants so desperately for Violet to be healed. Not only her scorched eyes and burned face but for all of her invisible scars and broken pieces too. The thing is, he just doesn't know if any of that is even possible.

"Louis," After a moment of fumbling and a quiet little 'damnit' grumbling from the girl's throat, Violet finds and cups Louis's cheeks. A determined little twist dominates her features as she breathes. "I'm so sorry."

The apology catches him off guard and, for a moment, he's confused as to why she's apologizing. His fingers slow but don't stop as they pick apart the knot and begin to carefully unroll the bindings. "About what?"

"About Marlon." Her thumbs rub against the soft skin and then tense when she feels his jaw set itself firm under her touch. "For being such an asshole to you when you were grieving."

Her eyes are closed when he carefully slides the last loop of fabric from her face. The scars that surround them are still pink but less angry. Shiny and silvery but no longer wet looking. And her skin that escaped the flames looks healthy in its usual pale hue instead of red and raw.

"It's fine, Vi." He hooks his pinkie finger around a few strands of ashen blonde that fall between her eyes, tucking them behind her ear with care. "You were grieving too. For different reasons."

"But, I-" Violet sifts awkwardly in her seat. She pulls her hands back and twists her fingers together before swallowing hard and trying again. "He was your friend… Our friend... and I-I shouldn't have-"

Louis leans forward and touches his lips to her forehead and Violet is positive that she felt something wet hit her wrist even before he pulls away and sniffles through a thick breath.

"We're good. I promise, okay?" He curls his own touch beneath her chin and tilts her head up, careful to angle Violet's eyes away from the sunlight. "Now, do you want to try opening your eyes? I miss seeing you glare at me."

With her stomach tying itself into knots and the soft panic growing behind her heart as every last reason not to do this swirls through her thoughts, Violet sets her mouth into a thin and determined little line as she nods.

The fingers beneath her chin are gone, but when Louis take her hands into his own she feels her confidence bolster. Smiles a frail little smile as his thumbs sweep over her pale skin, feeling how the delicate little bones, fragile like a birds wing, move hidden beneath her skin. He watches her, his breath held, as she screws up all of her courage and gingerly parts her lashes. He watches her as scarred brows furrow and pinch upwards.

Eyes of faded green blink slowly. Once, twice. Pause. And then again for a third time before they dart about wildly. Looking at everything, sliding everywhere, as a gasping sound bubbles up Violet's throat and tumbles over her lips.

"Well?" Louis asks, squeezing her hands as her eyes settle, wide and unblinking on his face. "Can you see me?"

Her chin is trembling and her face scrunches up in dismay, and Louis feels his heart shatter as she gasps a single, broken word.

"No." Her pupils scarcely react to light and shadow and her world is a frightening kaleidoscope of vague shapes and washed-out colours. Dilute and pale and bleeding together, muddled and confusing without the hard edges to shape them for her. "No. Louis, I can't… I-I..."

She drops her head and she wants to cry. She wants to scream and to shout and to rage against the unfairness of it all. She wants to roar and fight and stubbornly refuse to back down, but she does. She's quiet and she's numb, just sitting there with her hands in Louis's, knowing he is right there in front of her and all she can see is a watery blur.

The next thing that she is aware of is that her world tilts forwards and her nose is squashed and assaulted by the scent of fresh sweat over a faint whiff of old body odour. But mostly she is aware of being enveloped by Louis's warmth as he folds her into his arms and holds her against his chest.

"I'm sorry, Vi." He tries to remain strong for her, he really does, but he can't quite keep the tremble from his voice as he holds her tight. He knew it was a long shot that she'd regain her vision, they all did. When she had dragged herself from the river water and they had seen the blistering skin and the sunken eyes, they _knew _the damage was irreparable.

It's why Violet had spent her seclusion trying to sever her reliance on her sight; to prepare herself for a life without it, and it's why he had spent whatever free time he had with her; helping her to relearn the layout of the school through her other senses. But he had never ever stopped hoping, had never stopped _praying _for his friend to retain at least a little of her sight. "I'm so, so sorry."

Violet can feel his breathing, how his chest moves in rapid and shallow little bursts. Can feel how his heart is beating, ricocheting off of his shifting ribs as he gulps down ragged mouthfuls of air. She forces herself to breathe as evenly as she can in an effort to quell the nauseating feeling of loss and despair that rolls around in her belly. Tries to ignore the rise of bitter bile that scorches its way into the back of her throat and burns her tongue.

And she tries to ignore the slow and steady sound that is thrumming in her ears. A sound made of evenly spaced taps and soft thumps that she had thought to be the echo of Louis's heart bouncing against her own until the sounds grow louder, stronger; until they stop abruptly and a familiar voice utters a soft little "oh."

A familiar voice that has Violet tensing in Louis's arms. Her spine snaps rigid when she feels the safety of his limbs side away, the hunch returns to her shoulders and quickly deepens into a full, insecure slouch.

"I'm sorry," Clementine says quietly. Her voice is as soft as her gaze is hesitant as it shifts away from Louis over to Violet who refuses to look back at her. "I was just-"

Disappointment flits over Clementine's features as the blonde tucks her chin lower, purposely avoiding her hopeful gaze. Her head is bowed so deeply to her chest that it's impossible for Clementine to peer through the pale hair that slides forward to hang limp against her jaw.

"I didn't mean to intrude. Willy was helping me hang the tire for AJ a little while ago and I just…" Then she sighs. The little huff sounding hollow and defeated even to her own ears as she adjusts the crutches wedged under her arms and alters the angle of her path so that it would take her further away from the blonde rather than closer. "I should probably go."

The toe of her boot nudges a loose pebble and sends it tumbling off somewhere. Lost to the shadows of the overgrown weeds, clattering noisily over the uneven earth and jagged fragments of paving tiles until it lays silent and forgotten. "Someone should be keeping watch anyway."

Violet can feel the air around her move as Clementine passes, stirred up by the flutter of her open jacket as she swings herself forwards. It flicks the brittle, dead ends of her hair into her sightless eyes and breezes over her skin, teasing her nose with the smokey and slightly sweet scent that Violet has come to associate with the brunette.

Her heart gives a sudden twist of recognition and her chest aches with longing, and Violet has to lock her jaw as tightly as she can to cage the little pining whimper behind her teeth.

It was the same scent that had been there that first night, permeating the air when they had played war together. It was that little bonding moment after the first meal shared that had first set their feet on the path into each other's arms. It had been faint that night too, though then it had been hidden beneath Omar's cooking and just barely reaching her from across the table, rather than because of Clementine's attempts to actively avoid her.

But, it had been there none-the-less, just as it still reached her now.

It had also been there the night that Marlon had died too. Stronger and easier for her to recognize even though a little tainted with panicked perspiration and almost entirely smothered beneath the copper tang of Brody's blood. The bitter bite of burned gunpowder lingering in the air also unable to squash it completely. Unable to change the comfort she found in it as it wound itself around her, strengthening her trembling voice when she had stepped between Clementine and AJ and the rest of her friends.

And it had been there that night too. The night Violet's relationship with the girl had changed. It had clung to her clothes and lingered on her skin long into the first night as Lilly's hostage, just as it does so now and reminds her now of how close they had sat together up in the bell tower that night before the attack. How it had flavoured the kiss that Clementine's lips had pressed so sweetly against her own.

And, as she hears Clementine's slow path carrying her further away, she realizes how much she misses it.

The affection and the closeness that they had shared. She's so lonely. Lonelier now than she had ever felt when she thought herself abandoned. Beneath her shroud of hair she waits, wide-eyed and with her heart in her mouth. Waits for Clementine to reach out to her first. Hopes for kindness to be offered to her once more, a kindness that she knows that she doesn't deserve and has no right to expect.

But it doesn't come. Clementine isn't prepared to take the first step again. So, this time, it's up to Violet to reach out first.

"Clem? Don-"

"I gotcha covered there, Clem."

Violet's quiet voice had halted Clementine's journey, but it was Louis's eager offer to take watch that tightens the brunette's jaw and threads suspicion into her eyes. The tawny gold irises darken with shadows of emotion as Clementine blinks slowly and quirks one eyebrow as her scepticism twists her lips into a thin line.

"You sure?" She asks slowly. A hint of jealousy nips her brows together as she watches just how easily the older boy can roll his lanky self on to his feet and just how quickly those same feet carry him to her side. "I really don't want to intrude."

Louis offers her a small, understanding smile. One that barely creases his eyes from below as his cheeks move stiffly. He throws a glance over his shoulder and watches how Violet curls in on herself. Insecure and lonely. She's closing up again, he can see it in how she wraps her arms around herself and sinks her nails into her biceps. And if she wilts now…

He shakes his head, he doesn't want to think about that. So he softens his voice and his smile twitches a fraction wider. "You're not, Clem."

He walks with her, watching how Clementine slowly retraces her steps and picks her way slowly to the bench. Watches how she's hesitant, her confident air replaced with a shyness that he has never seen in her before, as she eases herself down and sits beside the quiet blonde. And watches, with his hands shoved into his pockets and amusement touching his eyes, the way that Violet silently and just barely sidles herself closer to the brunette.

It's awkward and uncomfortable, but righting wrongs is rarely easy. And, Louis is aware that it would be much easier without his playing audience to it. So, he simply fishes from his pocket the spare dressing roll that Ruby had slapped in his hand hours earlier and presses it into Clementine's palm; returning her frown of confusion with a smile and a wink before he turns on his heel and walks away, leaving the teen to stare after him.

And for a moment, Clementine does. She watches his jaunty stride as it whisks him out of the little graveyard and into the courtyard, around a corner and out of sight, leaving her alone with the fading melody of his merry whistle and Violet.

Not the same Violet who, when last they spoke, had been so broken and filled with a fury that had seen the older girl land an impressively strong sucker punch to Clementine's jaw. Nor the Violet who scowled and sneered when Clementine retaliated to the strike with a chokehold on the blonde's throat. Nor the Violet who she had next seen dragging herself from the river, still fighting and still furious, with a walker latched on her ankle; its jaw swinging wide in a fierce snarl as she kicked and flailed until Clementine had instinctively sunk an arrow into its skull.

This Violet is quiet and guarded, so much more so than the one Clementine had first met. And she is so afraid that this Violet -the one who had kept her back to her when she had entered her cell, the one who avoided her gaze and reached out for Louis when she had asked if she could see- has replaced the girl who Clementine had first seen crack a smile at her while cutting through a small mob of walkers. Who she had bonded with over heartfelt discussions of what they'd been through and who they had lost. The girl who defended her, tried to protect her, and the girl who had awkwardly flirted with her…

The girl who she had wanted to want her, the one she had kissed.

"You were right, Clementine." Sitting next to her it's easier to see the way that Violet's shoulder's tense beneath the layers of torn and frayed shirts and vest. It's easier to see how far the burn scars reach and it's easier to discreetly observe the way that nervous teeth tear at her lips or that her crossed ankles bounce out of anxious energy rather than frustration.

And it's easier to feel the sincerity in her words when she raises her head and smiles at her in that same tense way that she has every other time that she was about to say something that she would usually keep close to her chest. "You know, about Louis needing your help more than I did. It was… selfish of me to blame you for helping him. He would have never survived being there. On that boat. Louis… he's too gentle… Too much of a cocky jackass. He wouldn't have stood a chance against those guys… against Lilly. Shit, I nearly didn't."

This time it's Clementine who shifts closer. Her eyes cast down to watch the way that Violet's fingers clutch the edge of the bench and she finds herself torn between covering the knuckles that bleach white under the ferocity of Violet's grip and maintaining her distance. "Vi-"

"But you came back. Just like before. And I… I should have trusted you more, Clem. I'm sorry that I didn't. I'm sorry that I let Lilly and…" Violet releases her death grip on the bench and Clementine's heart flutters in a sudden swell of hope- until Violet draws them into her lap and squeezes them into fists. Notices the way that she blinks hard and she presses her lips together in an effort to hide the tremble in them. "an- and Minnie get inside my head. And I-"

Violet's words stop as a palm, soft and warm, places itself atop on her knuckles and squeezes.

"I'll always come back for you, Vi." The pads of Clementine's fingers stroke along the creases between Violet's own. Sliding down and curling back until the blonde twists her wrist and turns her hand, still beneath Clementine's, around and threads her long fingers between the other girls. Squeezing gingerly, until she feels Clementine squeezes back and she takes that gesture as the brunette's permission to cling.

"Whatever you went through there, with Lilly and Minnie. That was my fault. I made the call and you went through hell. I'm so sorry that I let that happen." She pauses, her tongue feeling thick in her throat as she swallows around it and tilts her head until it comes to rest against Violet's own. "I'm just glad that I got you back."

Violet hums quietly in her throat. A soft, content little sound that loosens the rigidity in her frame and sees her brows unknit as she laces and unlaces their fingers together, her expression switching from anxious to pensive as her thoughts wander. Basking in the gentleness of Clementine's touch as she carefully strokes her thumb along the back Violet's in slow, sweeping motions that seep warmth and comfort into soft skin and delicate bones. And, as she curls herself in deeper against the brunette's firm side, drawing the other girl's arm around herself, Violet catches the soft rattle of the pin still fastened to her vest pocket as the fabric shifts with the movement and frowns.

Easing her fingers free of Clementine's warm grasp, Violet brings both her hands to the accessory. Fiddles with it for a few moments until the stubborn pointed metal prong, stiff and rusted with age and water damage, pops free from its housing and she is able to slide it from the worn-out denim.

And even though her motions are soft and careful, Clementine is acutely aware of the blonde's fiddlings, holding her tongue until she hears Violet's sharp little yelp and hissed out swear that Clementine finds herself unable to contain her curiosity. "Vi?"

"Hmm?" Her voice is mumbled as it pushes past the bloodied finger stuck in her mouth.

"What are you doing?"

Tugging her finger from her lips and peering as best she could at the slice in the soft fleshy pad, Violet sighs and swipes the injured digit against the rough texture of her pants. "Saying goodbye to someone."

The silence that falls between them is lighter than the last, though it's still tightened by Clementine's confusion in response to Violet's cryptic answer. And though she can't see it, Violet can imagine the look that Clementine levels her with.

Tumbling the pin in her fingers, Violet closes her eyes and swallows hard. "Minnie gave this to me. A long time ago." She shuffles herself to the edge of her seat and pushes herself to her feet. "And I think it's time that I give it back to her."

Clementine's heart leaps into her throat as Violet pauses and squints down at the ground between her boots. She can see the dark shadows of the cracks that split the pathway and if she squints harder she can just barely force herself to recognize the clumps of weeds and broken bricks as actual hurdles rather than simple smudges of discolouration. She watches as Violet takes one step safely, and then a second, but when her toe catches the rise in the earth that her eyes had missed and she stumbles alarmingly, Clementine wedges her crutches beneath her arms and hauls herself up in a single fluid motion.

"How about I walk with you?" She offers. Bending her elbow out to nudge against Violet's own, hoping that the proud blonde doesn't find offence in Clementine's sympathy. "Then, afterwards, would it be okay for me to wrap your eyes again? It wouldn't be a good idea to strain them."

For a moment, Violet doesn't say anything. The only sound that surrounds them is the gentle shushing of the breeze as it winds around the grave markers, the gentle whispers of birdsong as the wings of the feathered creatures carry them across the ever-changing skies. And then there is a little swell of relief that storms through Clementine's chest and floods her belly with warmth as Violet tilts her head and slants her misted over eyes toward her. Openly meeting her gaze as best she can instead of forcing the brunette to battle for her eye line since that night atop the bell tower.

"I'd like that, Clementine." She breathes quietly. Facing the younger girl fully and with a tiny appreciative smile struggling onto her lips, Violet nods and curls her fingers into the thick denim of Clementine's sleeve and shifts herself a little closer. "I'd really like that."


End file.
